Contact: Maridith Geuder
Photographs, books, articles, and other materials about Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner are the centerpieces of a month-long display opening this week at Mississippi State University.
Born in 1897 in New Albany, Faulkner is considered one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century. Spending most of his life in his native Mississippi, he built most of his fictional works around familiar characters and locations. He died in 1962.
Beginning Friday [Dec. 4], MSU's Mitchell Memorial Library will be host to a traveling exhibition featuring the photographs of New York commercial photographer Martin J. Dain. Celebrating the centennial of Faulkner's birth, the more than 40 photos will be displayed in the second and third floor atriums.
To capture his subject on film, Dain made numerous trips to the state in the early 1960s. He eventually produced more than 200 photographs of the writer, his Oxford home and surrounding area, and his funeral.
In addition to Dain's work, Mitchell Memorial also will be featuring its own Faulkner materials. The Special Collections department and the circulating collection contain books, theses and dissertations, articles, catalogs, and ephemeral materials representative of the scholarly output inspired by Faulkner's work.
The traveling exhibition is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the Southern Arts Federation. Also sponsoring are state arts councils in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information on the MSU display, telephone (601) 325-7679.