Who are you?

I've been thinking about the question of who's a North Carolina writer. This is a matter of interest to me because I have to consider that I am one. I have lived here for more than ten years. I'm here for the duration, whatever that may turn out to be. If I'm to be considered from anywhere, it's here.
My problem is that when I write, I think like most purveyors of fiction and many essayists and poets, I call on my past. That wasn't here, except in a very distant sense: my paternal great, great, great grandfather emigrated from Virginia to Vance County. Needless to say, I never knew him, not even after he proceeded to west Tennessee. I spent more than half my life in Fairfield County, Connecticut. My earliest years were spent on a single street on the lower east side of Manhattan, with sojourns to summer camps in Vermont and to my maternal grandfather's farm in central Ohio. I attended college in Minnesota.
So, how can I be a North Carolina writer? This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know.