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For up to date submissions info, go to our Submittable page on the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature’s Submittable site by clicking on the link:

Submissions Information

Okay then, see yall in the funny papers. 2022 means 26 years online. Same publisher, same editor, just little old me. Not affiliated with any institution or organization. All hosting fees and registrations paid for by me.

-Valerie MacEwan

This is our Sister Site while we work on restoring this Mule It will remain the wordpress blog site until at least 2027. (love that date)

“No good Southern fiction, poetry or essay is complete without a dead mule.”

Celebrate the Mule! Celebrate the Jackalope, a Southern friend to all. Kinda’ like a bullfrog, it gets into your memory and burrrreeeeps its way out.

From the original Mule Statement of Reason, 1996:

We appreciate all the quirks, follies, and faults that have brought the region to where it is today. If our beloved “below the Mason-Dixon Line” self gives way to the influences of a status quo world which requires all people to be of one idea ”to walk in lock-step with all others” — we cease to be The South.

Simply put ”Let us celebrate the individual”. The South revels in individuality. Freedom and the right to be southern. It’s not a curse-word, or a curse. It’s just little old us. Not one race, not one religion, and certainly not just one cause! The Mule is formatted and published by liberal Democrats.

The South contains all sides of all arguments. And damn if lots of them aren’t wrong and totally illogical, but we’re not here to argue the South. We’re just here to write about it.

Help the best of The South stay as is. Let the bitter past be studied not re-lived. These are tenuous times and it’s hard to know what to say but I’ll tell you one thing, there’s a damn sight more kind and generous folks living here in my neighborhood than there are the stereotypical Rebel flag bearing assholes that live next door.

Remember, please, we are not simply a bunch of back-ass swamp-dwelling moonshine-drinking raccoon-hunting mother lovers. We are ” arguably” the last true bastion of individuality left in the US. The Dead Mule Southern Legitimacy Statement is about describing those things which are uniquely southern, wherever you are.

We are Carolina Dogs and Jumping Mules, yard dogs and possums, and all things that go bump in the night. All the humidity makes us really testy at times but sweet tea heals all wounds.