Contact: Maridith Geuder
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Brad Watson, an award-winning novelist and short story writer, will highlight several Mississippi State events planned for the Cotton District Literary Festival, a university-based complement to Starkville's 2005 Cotton District Arts Festival.
Author of "The Heaven of Mercury" (2002) and "Last Days of the Dog-Men (1996)," Watson will read from his work during an April 21 dessert theater sponsored by the university's Mitchell Memorial Library. Tickets are $5 for the 7 p.m. public event in the library's Grisham Room, with seating limited to 100.
The April 21-23 Cotton District Arts Festival is an annual Starkville-MSU collaboration to celebrate the performing, visual and literary arts.
Desserts for the Watson program will be provided by MSU Dining Services, with music by Jubilee, an acoustical ensemble featuring guitar, harmonica, dulcimer, and fiddle. A book-signing by the author will follow the reading.
A 1978 MSU English graduate, Watson currently is visiting writer at the University of Mississippi. He earlier taught at the University of Alabama and Harvard University, where he was the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English and American Literature.
His first book, a short story collection, received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His later novel, set in a fictional Meridian, Miss., was a 2002 National Book Award finalist.
In addition to the April 21 reading, other MSU-sponsored literary events include:
--A poetry competition for Starkville area high school students coordinated by the MSU English department. Winning entries will receive $100, $50 and $25 prizes.
--A reception on the 22nd for MSU English professor Nancy D. Hargrove, who recently was selected for a prestigious 2005-06 Fulbright Distinguished Chair. The Giles Distinguished Professor will discuss her work during a 10 a.m. presentation, also in the library's Grisham Room.
A four-time previous Fulbright selection, she is the author of two books, "Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot" and "The Journey Toward Ariel: Sylvia Plath's Poems of 1956-1959." The former was recognized by the Explicator Literary Foundation as one of the best of 1978, the year it was published.
Hargrove currently is working on a third book-length study of Eliot.
For more information about literary festival events, telephone Sheila Coleman at (662) 325-2559.