Distinguished author and Mississippi native Elizabeth Spencer headlines the slate of nine writers and four scholars who read and discuss their work at the 18th annual Eudora Welty Writers\u2019 Symposium, Oct. 19-21. The symposium honors the life and work of Eudora Welty. The theme of this year\u2019s event is \u201c\u2018Passing the Torch\u2019 from the \u2018Foot of the Ladder\u2019: Teaching and Learning in Southern Literature.\u201d According to symposium Director Bridget Smith Pieschel, the theme emerged from her contemplation of \u201cthe conflicted relationship writers and readers often have with education and teachers,\u201d which led her to Welty\u2019s novel \u201cLosing Battles,\u201d about \u201cthe valiant effort of teachers to bring the light of literacy and learning to people who\u2019d just as soon not be bothered with something so restrictive or unnecessary.\u201d In the novel, the young teacher Gloria said of her mentor Miss Julia Mortimer: \u201cWhat she taught me, I\u2019d teach you, and on it would go. It\u2019s what teachers . . . call passing the torch . . .\u201d Pieschel was struck by the conflict between \u201crule-plagued teachers\u201d and young creative storytellers who, more often than not, are \u201crailing against the very culture the teacher is trying to preserve.\u201d However, the teachers keep trying, and \u201cthey inspire flashes of brilliance that neither they nor their students expect, because it is the tension between these two cultures\u2014written and oral\u2014that creates much of southern literature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sonny Brewer<\/a> is a veteran newspaper editor, owner of Over the Transom Bookshop in Fairhope, Alabama, and board chairman of the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. His debut novel The Poet of Tolstoy Park<\/em> offers, according to Publishers Weekly, a \u201cheady blend of literary and philosophical references and some fine character writing,\u201d while writer Pat Conroy calls it \u201cone of those unique and wonderful books that sings a hymn of praise to the philosophical and spiritual part of daily life.\u201d He is also editor of the annual anthology of Southern writing \u201cStories from the Blue Moon Caf\u00e9,\u201d and his second novel, A Sound Like Thunder,<\/em> was released this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maude Schuyler Clay<\/a> has been hailed by The New York Times for \u201cfinding poetry in this slow, languorous countryscape\u201d for her collection of photographs \u201cDelta Land,\u201d which chronicles the contemporary Mississippi Delta. 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\u2019s photographs will be featured in an exhibit in MUW\u2019s Fine Arts Gallery in Shattuck Hall, with an opening reception hosted by the Department of Art and Design Thursday afternoon, Oct. 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n doris davenport<\/a>, a native of north Georgia, explores the voices of \u201cAfrilacians,\u201d African Americans living in Appalachia, in her latest volume of poems madness like morning glories.<\/em> Booklist said Davenport\u2019s long experience as a performance poet \u201ccomes through strongly in this unique collection,\u201d 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\u2019s Poems of Survival and Celebration,<\/em> Women Writing in Appalachia<\/em> and Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers,<\/em> among others, as well as frequently in the journal Appalachian Heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mindy Friddle<\/a>, hose debut novel The Garden Angel<\/em> was hailed as \u201ca comic delight\u201d and \u201ca standout\u201d by Kirkus Reviews. Described by The Washington Post as \u201cfunny, down-to-earth and steeped in a sense of place, \u201cThe Garden Angel\u201d 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\u2019 Conference. She is also a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and the Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Gay<\/a> made his publishing debut in 1998 at the age of 55 with a short story in the Georgia Review<\/em>. His novel The Long Home<\/em> 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<\/em> \u201csouthern writing at its very finest . . . packed full of that which really matters, the problems of the human heart.\u201d Hailed as \u201can author with a powerful vision\u201d 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,<\/em> which Publishers Weekly said \u201cconfirms his place in the Southern fiction pantheon\u201d and his novel Twilight,<\/em> which was just released this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynne Hinton,<\/a> is best known for her Hope Springs triology, the saga of the friendship of five churchgoing women in Friendship Cake, Hope Springs<\/em> and Forever Friends<\/em>. A trained minister who has served two congregations in North Carolina, Hinton has, according to Booklist, \u201ca deft touch with dialect and a deep understanding of the psyche of the women she writes about,\u201d with a \u201cstrong message of faith and values.\u201d Called \u201ca born storyteller\u201d by writer Lee Smith, she is also author of the novels The Things I Know Best, The Last Odd Day<\/em> and The Arms of God,<\/em> as well as the recent mystery Down by the Riverside<\/em> under the pen name Jackie Lynn, called by Publisher\u2019s Weekly \u201ca distinguished debut\u201d and \u201cthe setup for a great series.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anne Goodwyn Jones<\/a> is the author of the influential book Tomorrow Is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936,<\/em> 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 served as the visiting scholar at MUW\u2019s Southern Women\u2019s Institute in spring 2006, and 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 \u201c\u2018Representing Slavery\u2019: An In Medias Res Report on Teaching and Learning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynn Pruett\u2019s<\/a> debut novel, Ruby River,<\/em> has been described as one of \u201csheer exuberance and elemental power.\u201d Ruby River<\/em> 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<\/em> and the anthology Telling Stories<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dorothy Shawhan<\/a> and Martha Swain<\/a>, co-authors of the book Lucy Somerville Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician, And Feminist from the South<\/em> will explore Howorth\u2019s work as a champion of women\u2019s rights and an appointee under every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Kennedy. Currently visiting scholar at MUW\u2019s Southern Women\u2019s 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,<\/em> 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\u2019s University and author of \u201cPat Harrison: The New Deal Years\u201d and \u201cEllen S. Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women,\u201d past winner of the Eudora Welty Prize. She is also co-editor of Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth Spencer<\/a> has career as both writer and teacher that spans more than 60 years. 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\u2019s 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 novella The Light in the Piazza<\/em> 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\u2019s The Southern Woman: New and Selected Fiction,<\/em> Publisher\u2019s Weekly hailed her as \u201cone of the most distinguished of a group that includes Eudora Welty and Peter Taylor\u201d and predicted the collection would \u201cfirmly secure her place in the canon of American short story masters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n