Columbus is once again filled with authors sharing their stories, honoring the legacy of famous author and Mississippi University for Women alumna Eudora Welty.
Journalist and Author Jeannette Walls was the keynote speaker for the Welty Gala Friday night at the Trotter Convention Center. She shared lessons from her own life story, from growing up in poverty to her eventual success, which is also detailed in her best-selling 2005 memoir, “The Glass Castle.”
“I grew up in poverty, but that being said, both of my parents were incredibly wealthy in terms of knowledge and love,” Walls said during a press availability Friday afternoon. “So, from the outside, we looked like poor white trash. But inside, we read books, we told stories. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of dysfunction as well. But I believe that everything in life is both a blessing and a curse.”
Amazon named “The Glass Castle” one of the top 10 books of the decade, and it was made into a major motion picture starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts.
While sharing her story was initially challenging, as it was hard to be so vulnerable with herself, Walls said she has learned a lot about other people by telling the truth.
“When I sat down to tell my own story, I thought it was going to be a source of ridicule and humiliation, that nobody would get it,” Walls said. “And one of the many surprises is how sometimes people get it even better than I do. But the real blessing and the real surprise has been how, by telling my story, people feel safe telling me their stories.”
The Welty Gala is the annual fundraiser for the MUW Scholarship fund and is a part of the larger Welty Series. The series also includes an annual writers’ symposium, which kicked off for its 36th year Thursday evening and will run through Saturday. The symposium includes a diverse range of literary genres, including fiction and non-fiction prose to poetry.
The symposium started Thursday with a keynote by author Maurice Carlos Ruffin on his new novel “The American Daughters.”
Friday morning included talks from Brooke Champagne with her essay collection, “Nola Face,” Hannah V. Warren with her poetry collection, “Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales,” T.J. Anderson III with his poetry collection “t/here it is” and Pauline Kaldas with her novel “The Measure of Distance.”
Friday afternoon sessions kicked off with Minrose Gwin speaking on her novel “Beautiful Dreamer.”
James Cherry then took the stage to read poems from his book, “Between Chance and Mercy.” Cherry said he writes about his lived experience as a Black man but also as a witness to history.
“On the surface, we’ve made some tremendous gains, but beneath the surface, we still want to go backward as a nation,” Cherry said. “We’ve got an election coming up, so vote as your conscience leads you. But listen to what people are saying.”
Following Cherry, Gerry Wilson read from her novel, “That Pinson Girl,” a novel focused on a Mississippi woman, Leona Pinson, who gives birth to an illegitimate child in 1918 and refuses to name the father. Wilson said two big literary influences for her writing are William Faulkner and Welty, which show up in her main character.
“It’s (Leona’s) love, it’s her resilience that matters,” Wilson said. “So I think that in some ways, I have Welty to thank for the stories about resilience and persistence and resistance.”
The symposium is set to resume from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday with talks from Todd Osborne with “Gatherer,” Kemeshia Randle Swanson with “Maverick Feminist,” Christian J. Collier with “Greater Ghost” and Steve Yates with “The Lakes of Southern Hollow.”
All symposium sessions and art exhibits are free and open to the public. No reservations are required. For information on the authors, books, the Ephemera Prize and the Gala, see the Welty Series website, muw.edu/welty.
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