Coming from the Capitol of the Confederacy - unfortunately for the purposes of this thread, though, I could not be less interested in making myself a Southern Writer as such. My entire interest in writing and storytelling is to take myself out of my own world, so my subjects are located thousands of miles and a millennium and a half away.
This said, I am fierce about my roots, and do treasure certain other Southern writers. There is little that offends me like lazily characterized Southerners in other people's writing (books, stories, and of course particularly TV and film).
But I am surrounded by writers obsessed with our city and with the Civil War. It's so thick around here, it brings out the contrarian in me. I don't get the overwhelming proportion it represents in the local writing population. Every year at the James River Writers conference (ridiculously recommended, by the way, y'all!), I get to scratching my head over how few of my fellow regional writers do seem to want to get into any other worlds. To me that's a major point in writing - and, of course, being a contrarian, I resist what others are doing.
Not at all incidentally, this is actually the first sentence of my bio. "Diane Major is a native of Richmond Virginia, who has no desire to become the next great Southern Novelist."
Sorry - I hope this doesn't come across as hopelessly snotty. It's really not meant to, but this very point has fascinated me for a good while now!