Novelist Moira Crone returns as keynote speaker at Mississippi University for Women’s 27th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium Oct. 22-24. Crone will read from her recent novel, “The Ice Garden, which tells the story of 10-year-old Claire McKenzie who takes care of her newborn sister, Sweetie, while their mother sinks deeper into mental illness.
With its themes of birth and rescue, Crone’s novel is a fitting starting point for this year’s symposium theme, “‘This Very Leap in the Dark’: New Beginnings in Southern Letters.”
Symposium director Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg notes that the theme “looks at new beginnings for the characters of established writers and first-time novelists and poets, and celebrates the beginning of The W’s new low-residency MFA program in creative writing and the winners of our second annual Ephemera Prize for high school writers.”
All symposium sessions are in Poindexter Hall’s Connie Sills Kossen Auditorium and are free and open to the public, thanks to a grant from the Robert M. Hearin Support Foundation. The keynote session begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, followed by a reception and book signing with all symposium authors.
Welty Gala
The Welty Gala, a symposium highlight on Oct. 23, will host well-known American political satirist, journalist and author P.J. O’Rourke. The New York Times best-selling writer has been regularly featured in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator and The Daily Beast. He is a frequent panelist on NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”
For information about gala tickets, contact the MUW Office of Development and Alumni, 662-329-7148, or email Angela Ferraez at [email protected]. Watch The Dispatch for more about the gala and O’Rourke.
Symposium participants
In addition to Crone, novelists at the symposium will include Sefi Atta, a Nigerian writer who lives in Meridian. She will read from her third novel, “A Bit of Difference,” which tells of a Nigerian woman living in London, who returns to Nigeria for work and to attempt to reconnect with her family. Atta has also written five plays and four radio plays that have been produced in Nigeria, England and Germany.
Ravi Howard returns with his second novel, “Driving the King,” the story of a World War II veteran down on his luck in Montgomery, Alabama, until he lands a job as chauffeur and bodyguard to Nat King Cole. Through the lens of his main character, Nat Weary, Howard explores the segregated South of the ’40s and ’50s as well as the somewhat freer lifestyle Weary finds when he lands in Los Angeles, with its own version on discrimination and intolerance.
Jackson native Kiese Laymon brings his first novel, “Long Division,” the story of a high school student named Citoyen and his friends that involves time travel. The Boston Review calls it “a multilayered, allusion-packed, time-traveling plot … engaging complex questions of race, violence, gender, sexuality and our relationship to history.” Laymon will also read from his recent collection of essays, “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.”
Area author and Mississippi State professor Michael Kardos returns with his second novel, “Before He Finds Her.” Kardos crafts a gripping literary thriller that explores the tangled past and uncertain future of Melanie Dennison who has grown up in hiding in West Virginia but returns to her birthplace of Silver Bay, New Jersey, to try to discover the truth about the disappearance of her father, who is suspected of murdering her mother and attempting to kill Melanie when she was only 3.
Lisa Howorth will read from her debut novel, “Flying Shoes,” an in-depth exploration of Oxford and the main character Mary Byrd Thornton’s attempts to come to terms with the news that the cold case murder of her stepbrother may finally be solved. It is a fictional account, though the central crime is based on the murder of the author’s stepbrother, which remains unsolved. Howorth is part-owner of Square Books and has published widely on Southern language and culture.
Jackson resident and Missouri Ozarks native Steve Yates returns to the symposium with his second novel, “The Teeth of the Souls,” the sequel to his popular historical novel “Morkan’s Quarry.” While the first told the story of Michael Morkan’s attempts to hang on to his quarry during the Civil War, the second picks up after the war and chronicles his son Leighton’s struggle to make it a profitable business again in the chaos of Reconstruction.
Historian Miki Pfeffer will discuss her book “Southern Ladies and Suffragists,” which has been selected for this year’s Eudora Welty Prize. Pfeffer examines issues of gender and power as they played out at the 1884 New Orleans Worlds Fair, where women from around the country gathered, including some of the leaders of the burgeoning suffrage movement.
The poets
Poets at the symposium include Macon native T. R. Hummer who will read from his eighth collection of poems, “Skandalon.” In finely hewed verse, Hummer writes of stumbling blocks, both mortal and divine, of love and loss ranging from contemporary situations to mythological settings, from the pastoral to the blues.
Nashville poet T. J. Jarrett will read from her second collection, “Zion.” Her poems cross the centuries as she writes in her own voice and in the personae that range from long dead ancestors to Gov. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to create what poet Rodney Jones has called “an unforgettable dialogue of generation, of gender, of race.”
Randolph Thomas brings his debut collection of poems, “The Deepest Rooms.” These finely crafted narratives weave together multiple perspectives to create a family history and survey the Southern landscape from Thomas’s native Virginia to Baton Rouge, where he now teaches writing at Louisiana State University.
Melissa Ginsburg will read from her debut collection, “Dear Weather Ghost.” Her musical poems present enchanting images of a world that is both familiar and uncanny. A native of Houston, Texas, Ginsburg teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi.
Along with these published authors, The W will welcome five high school students, Makayla Raby, Summar McGee, Carly Sneed, Laurel Lancaster and Dharma Gilley, winners of the second annual Eudora Welty Ephemera Prize for fiction, essay or poetry. These students will be invited to read their work and lunch with the authors.
Exhibit, reception
The Welty Art Exhibit, “Intersections of Gender and Place,” with artists Laura Bell, Alicia Henry, Kathleen Loe, Suellen Parker and Kelly Thiel features an Oct. 23 artist talk at 3:30 p.m., followed by a reception at the Eugenia Summer Gallery at 5 p.m. The exhibit is on display through Oct. 30.
For more symposium information, visit muw.edu/welty or email Dunkelberg at [email protected]
Welty Writers’ Symposium schedule
■ Oct. 22 (7:30 p.m.)
Moira Crone, “The Ice Garden”
Reception and book signing with all authors
■ Oct. 23 (9 a.m.-noon)
Sefi Atta, “A Bit of Difference”
T. R. Hummer, “Skandalon”
Melissa Ginsburg, “Dear Weather Ghost”
Kiese Laymon, “Long Division”
(Welty Gala 7 p.m.)
■ Oct. 23 (1:30-4 p.m.)
Ravi Howard, “Driving the King”
TJ Jarrett ,”Zion”
Michael Kardos, “Before He Finds Her”
Ephemera Prize Reading
■ Oct. 24 (9:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.)
Randolph Thomas, “The Deepest Rooms”
Miki Pfeffer, “Southern Ladies and Suffragists”
Lisa Howorth , “Flying Shoes”
Steve Yates, “The Teeth of the Souls”
All sessions are in the Connie Sills Kossen Auditorium, Poindexter Hall, MUW, except the gala.
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