About the festival
The Southern Literary Festival is an organization of southern colleges and schools founded in 1937 to promote southern literature. Each year a different school hosts the Festival—which is, in effect, an undergraduate writing conference that entails writing workshops in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and playwriting; a writing competition in those areas as well as in formal essay and literary-arts magazine; and a venue in which the participating students, faculty, and general public attend readings by well known writers. Columbus State University is scheduled to host the Festival in 2013 and will do so in cooperation with The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians and the Columbus Public Library.
The SLF has an illustrious history. Robert Penn Warren, then a professor at LSU, was one of the founders. He spoke at the conference on a number of occasions, as did Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Flannery O’Connor, who won an award at SLF as an undergraduate and later headlined the conference as a nationally prominent writer.
Planning for the 2013 Festival is well underway. Tim O’Brien, the award-winning novelist and short story writer, is under contract to read at the Festival, as are the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, the rising-star novelist Kevin Wilson, the acclaimed poet Dan Albergotti, and the creative nonfiction writer Madge McKeithen. Wilson, Albergotti, and McKeithen will also be conducting writing workshops in their respective genres; Trethewey and Albergotti will answer questions about poetry during a panel discussion on Saturday morning; and all five writers will attend a reception at the Smith-McCullers House on Friday afternoon.
We expect some 200-300 attendees for the Festival—undergraduate writing students and sponsoring faculty from their respective institutions. The workshops, writing competitions, and events other than the public readings are closed to all but attendees from member schools. The readings will be free and open to the public and have been scheduled: Thursday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.: Kevin Wilson and Madge McKeithen; Friday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.: Tim O’Brien; Saturday, March 30, 11:00 a.m.: Natasha Trethewey and Dan Albergotti. All readings will be followed by a brief book-signing.
CSU will be collaborating on this project with the Columbus Public Library to the extent that the Library has chosen to make Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the Columbus area’s Big Read book for 2013. Henry McCoy, Programming and Communications Coordinator for the Library, has applied for and received an NEA Big Read grant for the project, which will entail 10 book discussions and several special events, one of which will be Tim O’Brien’s public appearance. Further, Terry Irvin, CSU Director of Basic Studies, has chosen The Things They Carried as the freshmen’s common reader for 2013, which will involve those incoming students in this event in an exciting and rewarding way, as Tim O’Brien has agreed to address CSU students directly during an on-campus presentation and book-signing at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, March 29—the day of his public reading. And finally, Jennifer Gray, an English teacher at Hardaway High School, Ronnie Dalton, a liaison with the Fort Benning community, and Marshall Callaway, a CSU creative writing student and Editor-in-Chief of Arden, the school’s literary-arts magazine, are all members of the steering committee and will be working to promote the event among their respective constituencies. Tim O’Brien’s appearance, as one component of the overall SLF event, will help to involve the larger community and bring more attention to CSU’s efforts with regard to the Carson McCullers Center and to the teaching and promotion of creative writing.
The SLF has an illustrious history. Robert Penn Warren, then a professor at LSU, was one of the founders. He spoke at the conference on a number of occasions, as did Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Flannery O’Connor, who won an award at SLF as an undergraduate and later headlined the conference as a nationally prominent writer.
Planning for the 2013 Festival is well underway. Tim O’Brien, the award-winning novelist and short story writer, is under contract to read at the Festival, as are the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, the rising-star novelist Kevin Wilson, the acclaimed poet Dan Albergotti, and the creative nonfiction writer Madge McKeithen. Wilson, Albergotti, and McKeithen will also be conducting writing workshops in their respective genres; Trethewey and Albergotti will answer questions about poetry during a panel discussion on Saturday morning; and all five writers will attend a reception at the Smith-McCullers House on Friday afternoon.
We expect some 200-300 attendees for the Festival—undergraduate writing students and sponsoring faculty from their respective institutions. The workshops, writing competitions, and events other than the public readings are closed to all but attendees from member schools. The readings will be free and open to the public and have been scheduled: Thursday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.: Kevin Wilson and Madge McKeithen; Friday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.: Tim O’Brien; Saturday, March 30, 11:00 a.m.: Natasha Trethewey and Dan Albergotti. All readings will be followed by a brief book-signing.
CSU will be collaborating on this project with the Columbus Public Library to the extent that the Library has chosen to make Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the Columbus area’s Big Read book for 2013. Henry McCoy, Programming and Communications Coordinator for the Library, has applied for and received an NEA Big Read grant for the project, which will entail 10 book discussions and several special events, one of which will be Tim O’Brien’s public appearance. Further, Terry Irvin, CSU Director of Basic Studies, has chosen The Things They Carried as the freshmen’s common reader for 2013, which will involve those incoming students in this event in an exciting and rewarding way, as Tim O’Brien has agreed to address CSU students directly during an on-campus presentation and book-signing at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, March 29—the day of his public reading. And finally, Jennifer Gray, an English teacher at Hardaway High School, Ronnie Dalton, a liaison with the Fort Benning community, and Marshall Callaway, a CSU creative writing student and Editor-in-Chief of Arden, the school’s literary-arts magazine, are all members of the steering committee and will be working to promote the event among their respective constituencies. Tim O’Brien’s appearance, as one component of the overall SLF event, will help to involve the larger community and bring more attention to CSU’s efforts with regard to the Carson McCullers Center and to the teaching and promotion of creative writing.