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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 3, 2006
Spencer to headline annual Welty Symposium
By Kim Whitehead
COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Distinguished author and Mississippi
native Elizabeth Spencer will headline the slate of nine
writers and four scholars who will read and discuss their
work at the 18th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, to
be held Oct. 19–21 on the campus of Mississippi University
for Women. The symposium honors the life and work of Eudora
Welty.
The theme of this year’s event is “‘Passing the Torch’ from
the ‘Foot of the Ladder’: Teaching and Learning in Southern
Literature.” According to symposium Director Bridget Smith
Pieschel, the theme emerged from her contemplation of “the
conflicted relationship writers and readers often have with
education and teachers,” which led her to Welty’s novel
“Losing Battles,” about “the valiant effort of teachers to
bring the light of literacy and learning to people who'd
just as soon not be bothered with something so restrictive
or unnecessary.” In the novel, the young teacher Gloria said
of her mentor Miss Julia Mortimer: “What she taught me, I’d
teach you, and on it would go. It’s what teachers . . .
call passing the torch . . .”
Pieschel said she was struck by the conflict between
“rule-plagued teachers” and young creative storytellers who,
more often than not, are “railing against the very culture
the teacher is trying to preserve.” She added, though, that
the teachers keep trying, and “they inspire flashes of
brilliance that neither they nor their students expect,
because it is the tension between these two cultures—written
and oral—that creates much of southern literature.”
Spencer, whose career as both writer and teacher now spans
more than 60 years, will kick off the symposium by reading
from her recent work on Thursday evening, Oct. 13. Born in
Carrollton, she is the author of nine novels and seven
collections of short stories and the recipient of numerous
awards, including the Award of Merit from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the Governor’s Award from the
Mississippi Arts Commission for Achievement in Literature,
and the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Achievement from the
Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her works have been
translated into 14 languages, and her novel “The Light in
the Piazza” was adapted into a 1962 feature film and a 2003
musical that made its way to Broadway and won six Tony
Awards in 2005. On the recent publication of Spencer’s “The
Southern Woman: New and Selected Fiction,” Publisher’s
Weekly hailed her as “one of the most distinguished of a
group that includes Eudora Welty and Peter Taylor” and
predicted the collection would “firmly secure her place in
the canon of American short story masters.”
The symposium lineup will feature a scholar and three
authors Friday morning, Oct. 20, beginning with scholar Anne
Goodwyn Jones. Visiting scholar at MUW’s Southern Women’s
Institute in spring 2006, Jones is the author of the
influential book “Tomorrow Is Another Day: The Woman Writer
in the South, 1859–1936,” which won the 1980 Jules F. Landry
Prize, appeared in a second edition in 1995, and was the
subject of a plenary session at the 2002 Convention of the
Society for the Study of Southern Literature. She has
delivered many keynote or plenary addresses on college
campuses and at international conferences on her research
interests, including William Faulkner, gender, women
writers, feminist theory and southern cultures. Her topic at
the symposium will be “‘Representing Slavery’: An In Medias
Res Report on Teaching and Learning.”
Following Jones will be Mindy Friddle, whose debut novel
“The Garden Angels” was hailed as “a comic delight” and “a
standout” by Kirkus Reviews. Described by The Washington
Post as “funny, down-to-earth and steeped in a sense of
place, "The Garden Angel” was chosen by Barnes and Noble for
its Discover Great New Writers series. A South Carolina
native who now lives in Greenville, Friddle is a recipient
of the South Carolina Fiction Prize, a fellowship in fiction
from the South Carolina Academy of Authors, and The Walter
Dakin Fellowship in Fiction from the Sewanee Writers’
Conference. She is also a two-time winner of the South
Carolina Fiction Project and the Piccolo Spoleto Fiction
Open.
Next on the Friday morning roster will be author William
Gay, who in 1998, at the age of 55, made his publishing
debut with a short story in the Georgia Review. His novel
“The Long Home” appeared a year later and was a New York
Times Book Review Notable Book and a finalist for the
Southeast Booksellers Association Award in Fiction.
Booklist called his second novel “Provinces of Night”
“southern writing at its very finest . . . packed full of
that which really matters, the problems of the human
heart.” Hailed as “an author with a powerful vision” by The
New York Times, Gay has won both the William Peden Award and
the James Michener Memorial Prize. A lifelong resident of
Hohenwald, Tenn., Gay is also author of the collection of
short stories “I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down,”
which Publishers Weekly said “confirms his place in the
Southern fiction pantheon” and the forthcoming novel
“Twilight.”
The last writer featured Friday morning will be poet James
Whitley, whose volume “Immersion” was chosen by Lucille
Clifton for the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. A lawyer
and social activist as well as writer, Whitley has been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his poems have appeared
in Coal City Review, The Paumanok Review, Valparaiso Poetry
Review and Xavier Review, among others. He is also the
recipient of the Ironweed Press Poetry Prize for his
collection “This Is the Red Door,” to be published by
Ironweed Press, and author of two chapbooks, “The Golden
Web” and “Pietŕ.”
After a lunch break, the symposium will continue Friday
afternoon with photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, whose
collection of photographs “Delta Land,” which chronicles the
contemporary Mississippi Delta, has been hailed by The New
York Times for “finding poetry in this slow, languorous
countryscape.” Clay is a fifth-generation native of the
Delta town of Sumner and two-time winner of the Mississippi
Arts and Letters Award for photography. Her photographs are
featured in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the
Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, among others, and have
also appeared in many magazines, including Esquire, Vanity
Fair, The New York Times Magazine and The Oxford American.
In addition to her symposium presentation, Clay’s
photographs will be featured in an exhibit in MUW’s Fine
Arts Gallery in Shattuck Hall, with an opening reception
hosted by the Department of Art and Design Thursday
afternoon, Oct. 19.
Following Clay will be novelist Lynne Hinton, best known for
her Hope Springs triology, the saga of the friendship of
five churchgoing women in “Friendship Cake,” “Hope Springs”
and “Forever Friends.” A trained minister who has served
two congregations in North Carolina, Hinton has, according
to Booklist, “a deft touch with dialect and a deep
understanding of the psyche of the women she writes about,”
with a “strong message of faith and values.” Called “a born
storyteller” by writer Lee Smith, she is also author of the
novels “The Things I Know Best,” “The Last Odd Day” and “The
Arms of God,” as well as the recent mystery “Down by the
Riverside” under the pen name Jackie Lynn, called by
Publisher’s Weekly “a distinguished debut” and “the setup
for a great series.”
Hinton will be followed by scholars Dorothy Shawhan and
Martha Swain, co-authors of the book “Lucy Somerville
Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician, And Feminist from the
South,” who will explore Howorth’s work as a champion of
women’s rights and an appointee under every president from
Franklin Roosevelt to Kennedy. Currently visiting scholar at
MUW’s Southern Women’s Institute, Shawhan is past chair of
the Division of Languages and Literature and professor of
English and journalism at Delta State University and author
of the novel “Lizzie,” about the daughter of a corrupt
governor of Mississippi who starts a newspaper for women in
the 1920s. Currently a resident of Starkville, Swain is
Cornaro Professor Emerita of History at Texas Woman’s
University and author of “Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years”
and “Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women,” past
winner of the Eudora Welty Prize.
Last in the lineup on Friday afternoon will be performance
poet, writer and educator Doris davenport. A native of north
Georgia, Davenport explores the voices of "Afrilacians,"
African Americans living in Appalachia, in her latest volume
of poems “madness like morning glories.” Booklist said
Davenport’s long experience as a performance poet “comes
through strongly in this unique collection,” which was a
finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
award in poetry. The author of five other poetry
collections, Davenport has published poems in the
anthologies “Out of the Rough: Women’s Poems of Survival and
Celebration,” “Women Writing in Appalachia” and “Bloodroot:
Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers,” among
others, as well as frequently in the journal Appalachian
Heritage.
The symposium will resume on Saturday morning, Oct. 21,
featuring the Welty Prize winner and three authors. Awarded
the 2006 Welty Prize at the symposium, scholar John K. Young
will speak on his winning book “Black Writers, White
Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century
African American Literature,” which explores the power
imbalance between African-American authors and white
publishers and the frustrations of authors from Richard
Wright to Toni Morrison with editors and marketers who
insist on changes in their manuscripts. Currently visiting
associate professor of English at Denison University, Young
has also published articles in journals such as College
English, African American Review, and Critique.
Following Young will be author Lynn Pruett, whose debut
novel, “Ruby River,” is described as one of “sheer
exuberance and elemental power.” “Ruby River” chronicles the
courage and compromises of a newly widowed mother in a small
Southern town in a masterful examination of family, marriage
and community. She has been published in American Voice,
Southern Exposure, Black Warrior Review and the anthology
Telling Stories. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the
University of Alabama, where she received her MFA, Pruett
currently teaches fiction at the University of Kentucky in
Lexington.
Next on the Saturday morning roster will be Kentucky native
Crystal Wilkinson, whose novel “Water Street” was a
selection for the UTNE Reader Book Club, which called it “a
sharp African-American updating of Sherwood Anderson's
`Winesburg, Ohio.’” Wilkinson is also author of a
collection of short stories, “Blackberries, Blackberries,”
named Best Debut Fiction by Today's Librarian. A recipient
of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, she is a
member of the Lexington-based writing collective The
Affrilachian Poets. Her work has appeared in, among other
journals, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Southern
Exposure, The Briar Cliff Review, Calyx, African Voices and
Indiana Review, as well as numerous anthologies.
Last to appear at the symposium will be novelist Sonny
Brewer, whose debut novel “The Poet of Tolstoy Park” offers,
according to Publishers Weekly, a "heady blend of literary
and philosophical references and some fine character
writing,” while writer Pat Conroy calls it “one of those
unique and wonderful books that sings a hymn of praise to
the philosophical and spiritual part of daily life.” A
veteran newspaper editor, Brewer is now owner of Over the
Transom Bookshop in Fairhope, Alabama, and board chairman of
the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. He is also editor
of the annual anthology of Southern writing “Stories from
the Blue Moon Café,” and his second novel, “A Sound Like
Thunder,” was released this summer.
Elizabeth Spencer’s appearance on Oct. 19, followed by a
book signing featuring all symposium authors, will be held
in the Nissan Auditorium in Parkinson Hall on the MUW
campus. The symposium sessions on Oct. 20 and 21 will be
held in the ballroom of Cochran Hall. All events are free
and open to the public.
The symposium is generously supported by The Robert M.
Hearin Support Foundation and The Southern Women’s
Institute. The Southern Women’s Institute is funded by a
$496,000 congressionally directed grant received through the
assistance of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and administered
through the U.S. Department of Education. For more
information, phone 241-6125 or visit
http://www.muw.edu/welty.
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