Southern Lit Alliance lecture features husband-and-wife authors

Husband-and-wife authors Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly will visit Tuesday, March 22, for the Southern Lit Alliance's next South Bound: Distinguished Lectures program.

Their main topic will be their 2013 novel, "The Tilted World," but each has other notable works.

Franklin is the author of a collection of stories, "Poachers," which won the Edgar Award for its title novella. He has written three novels, "Hell at the Breech," "Smonk" and "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter," which won the Willie Morris Prize in Southern Fiction, the LA Times Book Award for Mystery/Thriller and the UK's Golden Dagger Award for Best Novel. He teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Fennelly has published three full-length poetry books. Her first, "Open House," won the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award and was a Book Sense Top Ten Poetry Pick. "Tender Hooks" and "Unmentionables" followed in 2004 and 2008. She also published a book of nonfiction, "Great With Child," in 2006.

Fennelly directs the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year. She has won grants from the National Education Association, the Mississippi Arts Commission and United States Artists. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize and three times been included in The Best American Poetry Series.

She also writes essays on travel, culture and design for Country Living, Southern Living, AFAR, Garden & Gun, Oxford American and other publications. She and Franklin live in Oxford, Miss., with their three children.

"The Tilted World" has been described as a "riveting tale of crime" set against the backdrop of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The evening begins with a VIP reception at the Arts Building at 5 p.m. VIP tickets include cocktails, reserved seating at the reading and fast-track superpowers at the book signing. A benefit dinner with the authors will follow at 7:30 p.m.

The authors also will visit Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences for a discussion with local students while they are in town.