The Columbus Arts Council’s Writers’ Series welcomes New York Times best-selling author Richard Grant to the Golden Triangle Thursday. Grant’s 7 p.m. presentation in Parkinson Hall (Room 117) on the Mississippi University for Women campus is free and open to the public.
The Writers’ Series is an official Mississippi Bicentennial project made possible by a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council, through support from the Mississippi Development Authority (Visit Mississippi).
“In thinking of a special Bicentennial project that focused on Mississippi and art, we decided to base this series around art as expression through writing,” said CAC program manager and interim director Beverly Norris, who developed the project. “Mississippi is well known for artists in so many areas, but there’s just a special place in people’s minds for Mississippi’s gifted writers.”
Lost and found
Author, journalist and traveler Richard Grant can also be described as an adventurer. He has written of exploits from the Sierra Madre to Tanzania. Not so many years ago, Grant, who grew up in London, embarked on an adventure in the Deep South. On a remote strip of land three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto in Holmes County, he came to know an enigmatic, complex culture. The resulting book, “Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta” (Simon & Schuster, 2015), became a bestseller and won the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, among other accolades.
Novelist Deborah Johnson of Columbus has acted as liaison in helping bring Grant and other authors to Columbus for the Writers’ Series.
“When Beverly asked me to do this, I was really excited and anxious to do it because, at this moment, we don’t have a bookstore like Square Books (Oxford), Lemuria (Jackson) or Turnrow Books (Greenwood) to get these authors here,” said Johnson. “That the Columbus Arts Council wanted to do this really showed the depth of their thought and how they are thinking about the community.”
“Dispatches from Pluto” struck a chord with Johnson, a past recipient of the Mississippi Library Award for fiction. Like Grant, Johnson was a transplant to the South, where she came to realize the state is different from what people outside Mississippi, and especially outside the South, often perceive.
“It was much more complex, and there was so much more movement, so when I read his book, that part resonated with me — that he also was not a Southerner, even less Southern than I am, but he was able to catch these resonances and bring them forth. … I think this is Richard’s first time in Columbus, so we’d like to just give him a really warm welcome.”
In addition to three previous books, Grant’s work has included writing and narrating the BBC documentary film “American Nomads” and a consulting role in the acclaimed documentary “Omo Child: The River and The Bush,” about ending infanticide in southern Ethiopia. He writes for Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Al Jazeera America, the Telegraph UK, Aeon and several other publications. Grant now lives in Jackson.
His visit, and those of other authors, would not happen without the hard work and dedication of Johnson and Carol Crowell, Norris said. Crowell is assisting Johnson with work on the series.
“When I was asked to do this,” Johnson said, “the first person I thought of to help was Carol. She’s been a CAC board member and was very enthusiastic about the project.” Johnson also expressed appreciation for the support of Bridget Pieschel and MUW’s Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy.
More to come
The Writers’ Series, which has already hosted Michael Farris Smith and Scott Baretta, continues through 2017 with talks by Rheta Grimsley Johnson July 6, Katy Simpson Smith Aug. 3 and Deborah Johnson Oct. 5.
The series also branches out to present two films based on Mississippi authors’ books and set in the state: “My Dog Skip,” by Willie Morris, and “The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett. Other features include readings from the Columbus Writers and Storytellers Guild, a youth theater presentation and a Mississippi songwriting contest.
“It all revolves around the special way Mississippi weaves the beauty and lasting effect of language into the written word,” Norris said.
The Writers’ Series is supported by grant partners Main Street Columbus and its director Barbara Bigelow, as well as Bridget Pieschel and The W’s Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy. Additional funding and support is provided by an anonymous sponsor in memory of Lilla Pratt Rosamond and John Brown, by Visit Columbus, The Dispatch and the Mississippi Arts Commission.
For more information, contact the CAC, 662-328-2787.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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