Opening remarks: Bridget Smith Pieschel (English, MUW), Symposium Director
Welcome: Dr. Claudia Limbert, President of MUW
Presentation of the Eudora Welty Prize: Seetha Srinivasan, University Press of Mississippi, and Thomas Richardson, Eudora Welty Distinguished Chairholder
Introduction of speaker: Bridget Smith Pieschel
author of Fire in the Morning, The Light in the Piazza, No Place for an Angel, The Salt Line, The Night Travellers, On the Gulf, Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir, Ship Island and Other Stories, Marilee, Jack of Diamonds and Other Stories and many other works
After the reading, there will be a reception and book-signing by all symposium authors in the foyer of Nissan Auditorium.
co-editor of the essay collection Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts, author of Tomorrow Is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936, and many articles
journalist and author of the debut novel The Garden Angel
Coffee Break
author of the novels The Long Home and Provinces of Night, the short story collection I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down, and the forthcoming novel Twilight
author of the poetry collections Immersion, This is the Red Door, The Golden Web, and Pieta, and of poems published in The Coal City Review, The Paumanok Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others
12:00 Lunch Break
photographer of the collection Delta Land, whose photographs have been featured in the Museum of Modern Art and in Esquire, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine, among others
author of the Hope Springs trilogy, Friendship Cake, Hope Springs, and Forever Friends, and other novels The Things I Know Best, The Last Odd Day, The Arms of God, and Down by the Riverside
co-authors of the biography Lucy Somerville Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist from the South. Ms. Shawhan also authored the novel Lizzie. Dr. Swain is author of the biographies Pat Harrison: The New Deal Years and Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women, winner of the 1994 Welty Prize
author of madness like morning glories, soque street poems, voodoo chile, slight return, and other poetry collections, whose poems have appeared in anthologies such as Women Writing in Appalachia and Out of the Rough: Women’s Poems of Survival and Celebration and in the journal Appalachian Heritage
author of the prizewinning book Black Writers, White Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century African American Literature and of critical articles in College English, African American Review, and Critique, among others
author of the novel Ruby River as well as stories in the literary journals American Voice, Southern Exposure, and Black Warrior Review, as well as in the anthology Telling Stories.
Coffee Break
author of the novel Water Street and the short story collection Blackberries, Blackberries and of stories in Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Southern Exposure, The Briar Cliff Review, Calyx, African Voices, Indiana Review, and numerous anthologies
author of the novels The Poet of Tolstoy Park and A Sound Like Thunder and editor of the anthology series Stories from the Blue Moon Café
THERE IS NO FEE FOR THE SYMPOSIUM
This program is financially assisted 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. The grant is administered through the U.S. Department of Education.