A dozen poets, fiction writers, screenwriters, and editors will gather at Mississippi State University April 3-5 for an examination of the writer's role in society.
"Our Time, Our Place: The Writer as Witness," is the literary festival's theme. The free public sessions will be held in the Leo Seal M-Club Building at Scott Field.
Top-selling novelist John Grisham will make a brief appearance. The Mississippi State alumnus is scheduled to speak at a workshop on fiction.
In addition to the Southern Literary Festival Association and Mississippi Humanities Council, the event is co-sponsored by Mississippi State's English department, University Honors Program, College of Arts and Sciences, and Office of Research.
"A writer's job is to be a witness to his own experience of his own time and place, and to make that knowledge available to others," said Price Caldwell, Mississippi State English professor and festival association president.
"John Grisham's own work inspires the theme of the meeting because he has put Mississippi before the rest of the country for the present generation," he added.
The keynote address will be given by Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review. "The Editorial Author: Flowering My Petunia in an Onion Patch," will be his topic at the 7:30 p.m. program on the 3rd [Thursday].
On the 4th [Friday]:
Participants in a 9:30 a.m. poetry workshop will include Ralph Burns, editor of "Crazyhorse" and author of five books of poetry; Lisa Lewis, poetry editor for the "Cimarron Review" and winner of the American Poetry Review's Jessica Nobel Maxwell Prize; Richard Lyons, a Mississippi State faculty member whose book, "These Modern Nights," won the Devins Award; and Sidney Wade, whose book of poetry is titled "Empty Sleeves."
The session will be moderated by Gary Myers, author of two books of poetry and finalist in the Sweeney/Cox Poetry Series. He is an associate professor of English at Mississippi State.
Grisham will be joined for an 11 a.m. fiction workshop by Padgett Powell, a novelist whose work includes "Edisto" and "Aliens of Affection"; Thomas Hal Phillips, a Mississippi State graduate, novelist and screenwriter for "Nashville" and "The Biography of Miss Jane Pittman"; Brad Watson, a Mississippi State graduate whose first book, "Last Days of the Dog-Men," won critical acclaim last year; and Ashley Warlick, whose first novel, "The Distance from the Heart of Things," won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship.
A 2 p.m. panel discussion on "The Writer as Witness" will feature editors, writers and scholars, including Robert Phillips, Mississippi State English professor and editor of The Mississippi Quarterly. He will be joined by Stitt, Burns, Lewis, Phillips, and Wade.
At 3:30, actor and communication assistant professor Nate Bynum of Mississippi State will present a drama workshop, "Staging the Play." His screen credits include "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "The Rainmaker," the as-yet-unreleased version of Grisham's sixth novel.
Several workshops are scheduled for students. Participating writers will read from works of fiction and poetry at 8 p.m. on the 4th and in two sessions beginning at 9 a.m. on the 5th.
For additional information and a final schedule, contact Caldwell at (601) 325-3644.