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The 18th Oxford Conference for the Book, a program of readings, talks, and panels on March 24–26, 2011, will also celebrate two major literary events: the centennial of playwright Tennessee Williams’s birth in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911, and the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. Speakers will include notable authors, editors, and others in the book trade as well as educators, literacy advocates, and readers of all ages. Fifth and ninth graders will join the audience for two sessions with authors of books for young readers. The conference edition of Thacker Mountain Radio, a fiction and poetry jam, workshops for writers, and a marathon book signing at Off Square Books are also part of the festivities.

The conference will begin at the J. D. Williams Library at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 24, with lunch and a keynote address by Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, who will discuss her new book on Southern women and autobiography. The program on Thursday afternoon will begin with a celebration of American Poetry Month, when poets Michael McFee, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Richard Tillinghast, a Tennessean now living in Ireland, will read from their work and answer questions from the audience. Next, W. Ralph Eubanks, director of publishing at the Library of Congress, will talk with poet and memoirist Natasha Trethewey and novelist Jesmyn Ward, both from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, about their work. Artist and arts commentator William Dunlap will then moderate “Reading in the Post-Gutenbergian Age” with panelists Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, and poets Sarah Kennedy, of Mary Baldwyn College, and R. T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah at Washington and Lee University. The day’s program will end with authors and musicians appearing on Thacker Mountain Radio.

Two Literature for Young Authors sessions are scheduled for Friday morning, when area schoolchildren will join conference participants for presentations by Jon and Pamela Voelkel, authors of Middleworld, and Ally Condie, author of Matched. Three programs are scheduled for the afternoon, beginning with readings from two debut novels, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife and Justin Taylor’s The Gospel of Anarchy. Jamie Kornegay, owner of Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi, will then talk about narrative nonfiction with Curtis Wilkie, author of The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer, and Mark Richard, author of a novel, two collections of stories, scripts for film and television, and the newly published memoir House of Prayer No. 2. Tom Oliphant, who wrote for the Boston Globe from 1968 until 2007, will moderate a panel on “Writing about Sports” with journalists Rick Cleveland Clarion-Ledger), Wil Haygood Washington Post), and Wright Thompson (ESPN). On Friday evening will be an “Open Mike: Poetry & Fiction Jam” for all participants who wish to read selections of their own poetry and fiction.

The program on Saturday will begin at 9:00 a.m. with two workshops—one on reading problems and opportunities, and one on writing poetry. At 10:00 a.m. Ivo Kamps, chair of the English Department at the University of Mississippi, his colleagues Mary Hayes and Gregory Heyworth, and Jennifer Drouin of the University of Alabama will talk about the use of modern technologies in their study of literary texts. Following this panel Norman W. Jones, a literary scholar at Ohio State University, and Charles Reagan Wilson, a cultural historian at the University of Mississippi, will discuss the history of the King James Bible on the 400th anniversary of its publication in 1611.

“Comic Book Auteurs”—the first session on Saturday afternoon and the first ever session on graphic books presented at the conference—will feature Joyce Farmer, Michael Kupperman, and Joe Matt talking with Jack Pendarvis, author and creative writing teacher at the University of Mississippi. “City Lights: A Dialogue” will look at the history of San Francisco’s famous bookstore. Discussing this history will be Square Books founder and owner Richard Howorth and Paul Yamazaki, who began his career at City Lights packing books in 1970 and now heads the store’s book-buying program. Author Tom Franklin will preside at the closing session at 4:00 p.m. when two widely acclaimed young writers will talk about their careers and present readings from their new novels. Kevin Brockmeier, of Little Rock, is the author of two story collections, two children’s books, and three novels, most recently, The Illumination. Karen Russell’s first book of short stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was published in 2006 and received a National Book Foundation award. Swamplandia, her first novel, is about a family of alligator wrestlers in the Florida swamp.

The conference will end with a marathon book signing at Off Square Books at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. The party will celebrate Tennessee Williams’s 100th birthday with toasts and cake.

For more information concerning the conference, contact:
Center for the Study of Southern Culture
The University of Mississippi
P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848
Phone: 662-915-5993 | Fax: 662-915-5814 | E-mail: cssc@olemiss.edu
www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com

 
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