Courtney Rose: Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement I grew up chasing off guinea fowls and picking wild strawberries from the backyard. Cupping lightning bugs in my palm, eating pinto beans and cornbread, and licking honeysuckles in my bare feet. Calling and being called “honey,...
Donna Walker-Nixon : Poetry : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement Some writers question the right of Texans to claim they are part of the South. I claim that right because only a southerner would write about grandmothers who warn their grand children to not go into the...
Suzanne Cottrell: Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended East Carolina U., Virginia Tech., and NC State U. In 1976, I married a wonderful guy from North Carolina, and we have lived in North Carolina ever since. Once I could pronounce “y’all” as a...
Jenean McBrearty: Essay : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Drive east from Southern California and you’ll eventually run out of road. That’s when I knew I was in “the South,” where I could disappear, and the real me could burst forth! Wallpapering bathrooms for a housing...
Tyler Robert Sheldon : Fiction : February 2020
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in English (Rhetoric and Composition) at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have...
Gerri Almand : Fiction : February 2020
Southern Literary Statement: I was born in South Georgia and grew up in North Florida twenty miles from the Georgia State Line. My childhood revolved around church twice on Sundays and a prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. We’d make a...
Adrienne Burris: Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Adrienne Burris grew up in the purple shag-carpeted room her mother grew up in, the third bedroom of a small brick ranch sandwiched between a cow pasture and a tobacco farm. Her grandfather picked her up from high...
Abigail Carl-Klassen : Essay/Memoir : February 2020
I am a professional dirt bag and failed Independent Fundamentalist Baptist who grew up in the oil fields of west Texas. I am also poet, writer, educator, translator, and activist. My work has been published in English and Spanish and...
Brittany J. Barron: Poetry : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Gainesville, Georgia, and raised in Flowery Branch with a Southern-Belle attitude to prove it. At my granny’s house, gossip may as well be a side dish during Sunday lunch. When I am not writing...
Heath Bowen : Poetry : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: crawl of the Mississippi Delta, Heath has emerged as a contemporary poetic voice. He has been published in numerous literary journals for both poetry and fiction. He resides in the country just north of the southern roads...
Mark Currey : Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mark Currey is a singer-songwriter whose roots run through Ft. Worth, Texas and the deep pine forests of southeast Arkansas. Inspired by roots rock, classic country and Americana music as well as southern gothic literature, Mark is...
Marie Henry : Fiction : February 2020
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Southern Legitimacy starts with the breath, the first time I inhaled Faulkner and Tennessee Williams—the rhythms and sounds of their language sliding under my skin, pulsating through my veins. It’s amplified when I pick up...
John Rickmon : Three Poems from North Florida : Poetry: February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised south of Interstate 10 to a mother named Juanita, who was born and raised in the Appalachians, in Blacksburg, Virginia. I am distantly related to Addison Caldwell, the first cadet at Virginia...
Sheree Shatsky: Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m so Southern, my Ancestry profile predicted my relationship with my stepmother to be a 5th-8th cousin. Does the shared DNA make me uncomfortable? Nope. It makes me an Alabamian. Divinity We’re up with the birds, the...
Deborah Heinold : Fiction : February 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m full up with Southern. Grew up in Arkansas, right on the Oklahoma border, lived in South Carolina, North Carolina and now here in the Dismal Swamp. I may change the names to protect the folks whose...