Literary Friday: Mississippi Book Festival Edition
Tomorrow is the Mississippi Book Festival
It’s being called a Literary Lawn Party with more than 100 authors and thousands of their fans. The Mississippi Book Festival is here, and we’re on the road to Jackson to meet up with blogger Tamara Welch and cover as much literary ground as we can. There will be panels on Willie Morris, Faulkner, short stories, historical fiction, poetry, art book club picks, true crime, civil rights and the state of Southern fiction today. Not to mention tours of the State Capitol building all day long. This is the festival’s third year and the first time we’ll be attending. We hope to see some of our readers there, but if you can’t make it, you can still meet many of these authors through links to our interviews with them below.
We’ll also be posting pictures, video, recaps and more interviews after the festival, so stay tuned. And follow us on Twitter @deepsouthmag where we’ll be live tweeting the festival all day tomorrow.
Interviews with festival participants:
8 Questions for Kate DiCamillo, who kicks off the festival with a live interview Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m.
The Scribe author Matthew Guinn moderates the Mystery and Thriller panel, including John Hart.
Venture into The World of Michael Farris Smith who sits in on the Mississippi Noir panel along with Mary Miller.
Flight Patterns author Karen White will be talking about Book Club Picks with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney and Anton DiSclafani.
M.O. Walsh, whose 2015 debut novel My Sunshine Away blew everyone away, moderates the Southern Fiction Today panel, including Lee Clay Johnson and Steve Yates.
For more Mississippi reads, including some by festival authors, check out Jamie Kornegay’s Mississippi Reading List.
See the full festival schedule here.
Other Literary News
Truman Capote’s ashes going up for auction has to win the prize for weirdest literary news this week. Vanity Fair talks to Darren Julian, the man responsible for the September auction, who says Capote is looking down laughing.
Liz & Lisa blog published its Best Books of the Month: August Edition with Erika Marks’ The Last Treasure and Bethany Chase’s Results May Vary making the cut.
Electric Literature talks to Megan Abbott on Family, Ambition and the Mystery of Gymnastics as her new book You Will Know Me timed perfectly with the Olympics. Fingers crossed Abbott makes a surprise appearance in Jackson!
Literary Events, Workshops & Contests
Suzanne Vega and Duncan Sheik will premiere workshops on a new musical about Carson McCullers, “Lover, Beloved,” August 23 and 26 at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas.
University of Tennessee at Knoxville kicks off its fall series of Writers in the Library on August 29 with Christopher Hebert.
Tinderbox Writers Retreat is scheduled for September 23-27 in Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, with Kimberly Brock and Kristy Woodson Harvey.
And Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat will be October 28-30 in Ossabaw Island, Georgia.
Save the dates for upcoming book festivals, including Decatur Book Festival September 2-4, Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 14-16 and Louisiana Book Festival October 29 in Baton Rouge.
Southern Voice
Read Higher Ground, an essay by Margaret McMullan (who will be moderating the Short Stories panel at the Mississippi Book Festival), and Reconstructing, an essay by Michael Farris Smith.
To find out more about your favorite Southern authors’ haunts and hangouts, download the Deep South Literary Trail App, available direct from iTunes and for Android and perfect for those winter road trips.
Have a piece of news, event, video or something else related to Southern lit that you’d like us to consider for Literary Friday? Send an e-mail to [email protected].
