The River of Strange

April is complete.

Just read this in Gardens and Guns, a magazine out of Charleston, SC that is surprisingly good (despite the name). “The beautiful thing about Southerners is how happy they are to tell you all the evil things that other people...
Essays

Drew Coons :: Becoming a Man ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I entered this world in Florence, Alabama in 1950. My family dates from the Carolinas in the early 1700s. Family lore has my predecessors fighting the British along with Mel Gibson depicted in the movie The Patriot....
Poetry

Clayton Walker :: euthanasia ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Refusing the confederate conscript, the men of Winston County, Alabama were given a choice to join the confederate army or be killed. Several men, including my great great grandfather, refused to join, were jailed, and minutes before...
Poetry

Greg Stidham :: Mississippi in Spring

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Am I legitimate? Well, my parents led me to believe so. But legitimately “southern”? I was born in Indiana, lived in Ohio until age five, when we moved to Atlanta when it was still a town–pre-Falcons, pre-Underground...
The River of Strange

Ocracoke Island, NC

Yes, the April issue is lagging behind, no fooling. I’m on Ocracoke Island, NC. Where the wi-fi is slow and the living is good. If you’re scheduled to be published this month, you’ll be online by Thursday the 13th. I...
Essays

Erika Hoffman :: Home Fries Riff ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended Duke University aka University of New Jersey, the state where I was born and bred. I married a Georgian fellow I met there and lived in Atlanta for five years before returning to North Carolina...
Fiction

Juan Cruz :: Open All Night ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I lived in South Carolina for almost a decade. I earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina (the original USC) before moving to Clinton, where I...
Fiction

Andrew Brasfield :: Green Top ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live just outside of Birmingham, Alabama, across the creek from where I grew up. Despite spending eighteen years yelling “War Eagle” like my uncle and grandfather, I ended up at the University of Alabama. While attending the...
traitors are not heroes.
The River of Strange

State of the Mule Address

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m so southern, I created the southern legitimacy statement in 1996 when we first started publishing this literary journal. The requirement to send a “statement” seemed fun at the time and necessary later. As the submissions grew,...
Fiction

James Emery :: Yellow Sodbuster::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My South is dichotomy and contradiction. Trailers to million dollar homes. Homemade apple wine from Mason jars to bottles of bourbon from a call list. Dumplins and banana pudding to grilled triggerfish and cherry clafoutis. A violent...