Southern Literary Festival '97

The writer's role in society

For three days this spring, Mississippi State's literary sons came home to examine the role of the writer as witness in society.

Grisham

John Grisham ('77), Brad Watson ('78), and Thomas Hal Phillips ('43), along with 10 other writers and editors of national prominence, converged on campus April 3-5 for the 1997 Southern Literary Festival.

Held annually at various locations in the South, the 60-year-old festival features workshops; readings; poetry, drama, and fiction competitions; and informal discussions between the panelists and the public.

The event's theme this year, "Our Time, Our Place: The Writer as Witness," was chosen by 1997 festival president Price Caldwell, associate professor of English at Mississippi State.

"I was very pleased with the way the festival turned out," Caldwell said. "We had students and teachers from about 30 schools, including schools in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Missouri."

According to Caldwell, many Mississippi State people participated, particularly from the College of Business and Industry.

"I expected an audience of about 120 and hoped for 150, but a total of 198 registered, and an unknown number of others attended one program or another. For the John Grisham program, there was standing room only, though we had 190 chairs in the meeting room."

Grisham, one of the most popular writers in the world today, is the author of nine bestselling novels, including most recently The Runaway Jury and The Partner. Five of his books have been made into films. He served as a panelist for the fiction workshop and later fielded questions from the audience about his meteoric writing career. He received a bachelor's degree in accounting from Mississippi State and a law degree from the University of Mississippi. Grisham currently lives in Virginia.

Phillips

Hal Phillips has written five novels: The Bitterweed Path, The Golden Lie, Search for a Hero, Kangaroo Hollow, and The Loved and the Unloved. He is best known as a screenwriter and has spent much of his career in Hollywood working on such films as Ode to Billy Joe, Minstrel Man, A Place to Come To, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Thieves Like Us, and Nashville. He lives in Kossuth. Phillips was a panelist for the fiction workshop and the "Writer as Witness" workshop, and also gave a short story reading.

Brad Watson is the author of the highly acclaimed collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, which recently won the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. This fall, he begins a five-year appointment as Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in English and American Literature at Harvard University. He currently is at work on a novel. Watson joined Phillips and Grisham on the panel for the fiction workshop and read a short story from his collection as well as an excerpt from his novel in progress.

William Henderson, a Mississippi State undergraduate majoring in English, read "Doe Day," his winning entry in the short story competition, which he wrote under the pen name William Burt.

Collin Tobin, a student at Lander University in South Carolina, won the poetry competition for his poem, "On a Pale Pegasus," and second place went to Mississippi State sophomore Scott Brumfield for his poem, "Scarecrow."

Caldwell built the festival's agenda, to a great extent, around student participation.

"My goal was to make the meeting an inspiration to undergraduate writers and to emphasize the responsibility writers have to the public," he said. "Writers who can articulate what our values and needs are, as individuals, can help civic leaders conceive what policies are needed for the public welfare. To my mind, therefore, any program which can clarify the writers' role in society is to the good. I take heart that our visitors seemed to enjoy the meetings and learned a lot from them."

This year's festival also featured a play, Jane Wychek, Queen of Suburbia, which won the drama competition. Written by Jason Wright of the University of Southern Mississippi, the presentation was directed by Nate Bynum, who teaches acting in the Department of Communication at Mississippi State. Bynum's screen credits include The People vs. Larry Flynt, The Rainmaker, Candy Man II, Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, Savannah, and In the Heat of the Night. He also conducted a festival workshop, "Staging the Play."

Other program participants were:

Festival coordinator Price Caldwell, left, visits with participants Padgett Powell, Ashley Warlick, and MSU alumnus Brad Watson

Ralph Burns, editor of Crazyhorse. He is the author of five books and has won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry.

Price Caldwell, director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State and president of the Southern Literary Festival for 1997. His stories, poems, and articles have appeared in Image, Georgia Review, Mississippi Review, Carleton Miscellany, New Orleans Review, Southern Review, and Best American Short Stories 1977.

Lisa Lewis, poetry editor for The Cimarron Review. Her book of poems, The Unbeliever, won the 1994 Brittingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Richard Lyons, author of These Modern Nights, which won a Devins Award. An assistant professor of English at Mississippi State, he has published poetry in The Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, Shenandoah, and The North American Review.

Gary Myers, author of World Effects, which won the Stanley Hanks Poetry Award in 1990, and Lily Intense Dreaming. An associate professor of English at Mississippi State, he has published poems in The New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Descant.

Robert Phillips, editor of the Mississippi Quarterly and professor of English at Mississippi State. He is the author of two books, Richard Harding Davis and Shelby Foote. He also has edited a collection of 19th century Mississippi authors.

Padgett Powell, author of Edisto, which was nominated for the American Book Award; A Woman Named Drown; Typical; and Edisto Revisited. His new book, Aliens of Affection, is due out this year. He has won a Whiting Award and a Prix de Rome.

Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review. He is the author of The World's Heiroglyphic Beauty: Five American Poets, and his new book, Uncertainty and Plentitude: Essays on Five Contemporary Poets, will be published this year.

Sidney Wade, author of the 1991 book of poems, Empty Sleeves. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Paris Review.

Ashley Warlick, author of the novel The Distance from the Heart of Things, for which she became the youngest winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship.

This year's program was assisted financially by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council. Other sponsors included the Southern Literary Festival Association and the university's Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, University Honors Program, and Office of Research.