Literary Friday, Edition 212
Mississippi Book Festival Recap
We hit the road last Friday for the Mississippi Book Festival, which held its second annual event at the Capitol in Jackson on Saturday. Blogger Tamara Welch of Traveling With T joined us, so we were able to cover a lot of ground and get plenty of pics and video. We’ll be posting a more in-depth “afterword” once all the pics are in, but one of the most interesting panels for Southern lit lovers was “Southern Fiction Today,” moderated by M.O. Walsh and including Brad Watson, Steve Yates, Ed Tarkington, Paulette Boudreaux and Lee Clay Johnson. Walsh talks about the tropes of the genre and its often violent tendencies in the video below. See more videos from the fest on our YouTube channel here.
Literary News
Electric Lit compiled the best of yesterday’s #SummerReads book puns on Twitter. Our favorite might be As I Lay Frying.
Win a copy of Mary Beth Whalen’s The Things We Wish Were True — about a tragedy in a small North Carolina town — before it hits shelves in September.
“Ya-Ya” author Rebecca Wells is on the schedule for the Louisiana Book Festival, coming up October 29 in Baton Rouge. Read an excerpt from her latest novel in progress at The Oxford American.
Rolltop Publishing announced that the audiobook of Imogene in New Orleans by Hunter Murphy is now available. Read our review of the book here.
Ron Rash talks to Publisher’s Weekly about his new book The Risen and his attachment to the natural world.
Literary Events, Workshops & Contests
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.
Latest in Southern Voice
Five Star by Christopher Lowe, a short story about a high school football star trying not to become a cliche.
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].
