by Laurie O’Hare
Previously published on the Mule way back in 1998 by golly…
brought back by popular demand…

by Ed Laird
Southern Legitimacy Statement:

In the beginning, God created the word. And the word begat words, but they did not live up to their potential. So God came to a group of people in the hottest, most humid part of the country who were without air-conditioning, but had communal gathering places called front porches.

Regina Williams
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I don’t think I’m Southern–I know. I grew up in northeast Arkansas on a small farm that didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was a teenager. My dad was a small country preacher who baptized a drunk in our pond amid the mud and cow manure. ‘Nough said?

G. C. Smith
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I’m for sure Southern cause I chill out on Budweiser while propped up in front of the boob tube watching NASCAR racing. I wrote a novel about murder in the world of Nextel Cup racing. The title is WHITE LIGHTNING. If that don’t make me Southern, nothing will.

Wade Ogletree
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
This here’s speculative southern fiction, set in Fairhope, Alabama; Fairhope’s like Carmel with sweat stains. It’s “speculative” ’cause I ’spec the main character’s parents were related. That would go to explain alot.

Enough of that. I’m Wade Ogletree, and for most of my life I was an Alabama expatriot living abroad (in California). I’ve suffered through years of anti-southern slurs, am glad to be back, and don’t mean to promulgate such slander in my fiction. No sir, my slander is far more original than that.