S.E.B. Detling :: On Choosing the Messages Adults Send to Children ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Given up for adoption in a one-light Tennessee town, I grew up in Memphis along the Mississippi River dancing ballet at the historic Orpheum Theatre and later dancing improv in the bars along Beale Street. I now...
David Kendall :: Resurrection of the Dead Mule
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A few years in Biloxi, Mississippi Near the coast of waters blue, I enjoyed the Southern hospitality From the local folks I knew. Hearts as big as the whole outdoors And warm welcomes as if royalty, I...
Lisa Briley :: Healer ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Texas and raised in Mississippi, I spent my childhood hunting lotus and chasing fireflies. Though I moved around in my twenties, the South is in my blood and where I belong. Healer They say the...
Tyler Robert Sheldon :: So What Happened Was, Or: The Ghost and the Bell ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in English at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have the BEST boudin....
Alexander Payne Morgan :: Cargo Cult ::
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY: I lived all my life in Georgia until I graduated from the University of Georgia. My mother was born in Paducah, Kentucky, and her mother in Tennessee. My mother’s grandfather used enslaved labor on his farm, fought with...
Les Brown :: Chicken House ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a North Carolina free-range mountain farm boy. I crawled all over our Blue Ridge, swam with water snakes in the icy cold Stillhouse Branch, (that I now own). aptly named because my great grandfather operated...
Edward Burke :: Marlovian Moment ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Edward Burke (dba strannikov) now lives for the second time in his life south of the Red River demarcating Texas from Oklahoma. He grew up in South Carolina, and growing up once there was plenty, although he...
Andrew Johnson :: Big Bottom Fish ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I visited the Asbury revival in Wilmore Kentucky for five days. The people there were hospitable and friendly, epitomizing Southern Charm. In the town and the city, I frequently heard “God Bless You.” It felt like a...
Ruth Chapman Heinold :: Hearts Can Break
My mom died in 2010. She was my life. I find her writing when I search through boxes looking for winter scarves or thumb through an old cookbook of hers. Bits and pieces on scrap pieces of paper. Odds nd...
Epiphany Ferrell :: The Amazing Chicken Man
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Southern Illinois, emphasis on Southern. North of us is “downstate,” and sometimes they like to say they are Southern Illinois but they ain’t. Southern Illinois – especially the “Southern Seven,” meaning the southernmost seven...
Danny Barbare :: Pisgah Mountain
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Basically, I’m 60, and I have never left the South. I went North one time to get vitamins. And Thanksgiving once. Other than that, I stayed stuck in Greenville, South Carolina and other Southern states. My accent...
Ettore Cassetta :: Ghost Country
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My maternal grandfather was born in the south of the Marche region, southern Italy, in 1930. In 1948 he joined the Carabinieri Corps in hopes to find stable employment after the war, and was sent southern still,...
Adrienne Pilon :: Roots
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live pretty far south of the Mason-Dixon line, in central North Carolina. Though I’m a transplant, I make a mean batch of chow-chow and a sublime bourbon pecan pie. And those bitters mentioned in this piece?...
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy :: Home Again
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am Southern by nature as well as birth. I like my tea sweet, spring finds me digging in the dirt to plant flowers and vegetable. I eat my okra fried and on Sundays you’ll find me...
Poetry
Essays
