Van Wurm: Pachinko in the Afterlife
Southern Legitimacy Statement: For my prior publications in The Mule, I have written of my semi-fictional relatives from the part of the world where I first saw the light of day — West Alabama. This time the setting of my story...
Claire Fullerton: A Place in the World
Southern Legitimacy Statement: a proud Southerner from Memphis, Tennessee. For nine years, I worked in Memphis radio, beginning with a Memphis Music show on WSMS and ending on WEGR, on the infamous Beale Street. A Place in the World I used...
Rob Bockman: Costume Party
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A resident of South Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rob Bockman writes fiction drawing from his experiences traveling across the Southeast, mostly through the lens of folklore and myth. The...
LaVonne Roberts: Coming Home
As a girl whose more Texan out of Texas than in, I’m known as Gotham City Cowgirl in parts out East and as the girl with the Texas is larger than France t-shirt in France Mostly, I’m known for takin’...
Claire Fullerton: Whistlin’ Dixie
Southern Legitimacy Statement I come from Memphis. I claim ownership to her nuances, which I wear like a badge of honor. And it’s not so much that I come from Memphis as I come from her ways and means. There’s...
Ronnie Sirmans: 4ever
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy tomato sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home.
Joe Halstead: Hoppy
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: It’s kind of wild where I grew up. I had my own gun at six years old. Ran down rabbits with my dad and helped beat their heads against the bumper of the truck, because they weren’t...
Michelle Brooks: All Women Are Bunnies
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As for my southern legitimacy statement, here it goes. I grew up in Mineral Wells, Texas where my mother sold rattlesnakes that had been frozen and subsequently fashioned into paperweights. Nothing could put a smile on her face...
Memoirs on the Dead Mule
The Dead Mule speaks in many voices. Mule Essays lead the mind into myriad swamps of distant memories or new ideas covered in eloquent jargon and folksy rough and rowdy ways. We’ve decided to feature Memoirs as a stand-alone section...
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Sara Dacus with Lindsey Bell and James Wiser
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and have lived the entirety of my life in Searcy, Arkansas. I believe in southern hospitality, and I believe there is no greater entertainment than watching fast horses run in a circle while wearing...
Justin Evans Poetry
SLS: Though I was not born or raised in the South, I have lived in Georgia, Texas, and in North Carolina, while I was in the U.S. Army. I may not know much, but I know enough to never refer...
Sidney Kidd: The Day I Grew Up
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I reckon my statement should include things I take for granted even as I attempt to ignore all the stereotypical attributes. I grew up in a three room shotgun shack that leaned to the left upon rotted...
Willie Smith: One Handful
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Greenbelt, Maryland and left that Yankee-leaning state at age 3 to spend the next 15 of my formative years in Fairfax County, Virginia. In public school I studied Virginia History in the 4th, 7th...
Gracjan Kraszewski: American Believer
Southern Legitimacy Statement: “American Believer” … is told through an antihero’s perspective and employs humor to ask deeply serious theological and societal questions. What do people worship? That is the story’s central question. This work is inspired, however loosely, by the...
Ferdinand Hunter: Evan’s Lament
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in a small Georgia town and spent my childhood summers in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Since then I have lived in many countries, finding a way to make a home in all of those places. But no...
Poetry
Essays
