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Significantly Southern: Conference on local literature comes to town this week
Later this week, Chattanoogans have an opportunity to do something, see something and hear something that cannot be obtained anywhere else.
We have the chance to see and meet, talk to, shake hands with and get books signed by the most prominent and upcoming raft of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essay and screen writers the South has to offer.
What’s more, we can hear readings from some of them — even readings of work still in the making.
We’re talking about people like Charles Frazier, author of “Cold Mountain,” Lee Smith, who penned “The Last Girl” and Allan Gurganus, who wrote “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
We’re talking about Richard Bausch, Madison Smartt Bell, Roy Blount, Jr., Robert Morgan, Rita Dove, Josephine Humphreys, Bobbie Ann Mason, Edward P. Jones and Natasha Trethewey. And dozens more.
These are people who have won Pulitzers, National and American book awards, Robert Penn Warren awards, National Humanities medals. You get the picture.
They’ve been on the New York Times Best Sellers lists, on NPR, in the New Yorker, in Ploughshares, in the Oxford American, in Esquire and yes — in Garden & Gun.
The 2015 Celebration of Southern Literature is exactly what it is billed to be: the premier literary event of the South. But it’s not just for writers. It’s for readers and book lovers and movie lovers — admirers of great storytelling of all stripes.
This is the 18th biennial event showcasing southern writing — all held here in Chattanooga.
In the past, we’ve met and been wowed by lates and greats like Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, William Styron, Reynolds Price and Horton Foote. (This writer once went days trying not to wash the hand that touched the tip of Eudora Welty’s sweater-shawl.)
The event used to be called the Conference on Southern Literature, and it is sponsored by the Southern Lit Alliance, formerly the Arts and Education Council.
Susan Robinson, the alliance’s executive director, said the organization changed its name to better reflect its mission and to be just about literature. The group handed off other programs it had led, and received support from local foundations and organizations which recognized this event as “the largest gathering anywhere of southern writers.”
The alliance also then was able to drop the admission cost to $50 for the entire three-day event (or $25 for just one day) to make the talks, readings, demonstrations and events more accessible.
Still, Robinson says, the group has one more important message of accessibility for Chattanooga area lovers of story:
“One of hardest perceptions we have to overcome is with people who think this is not for them because ‘I haven’t read those authors’ or ‘I’m not a professor.’ Well, if you like to read, this is an event for you,” she said.
There will be panel discussions such as “Books to Film: Their Role in the Southern Experience” with the writers of “Cold Mountain” and “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
On the list of outside-the-normal-schedule events are a-la-carte events, such as intimate dinners with authors at private homes — Southern Literary Feasts. A ticket for dinner in one of the homes is $125.
On Sunday, two free (or for a donation) post-conference events feature sessions on letterpress printing and hand papermaking as well as a jazz/poetry performance demonstrating how the first poems were recited to music played on the lyre. If you think that sounds stuffy, consider it this way: Lyre became the root of the word “lyric,” and that base made poetry and jazz natural-born partners.
Chattanooga and local residents are truly lucky — and honored — to have this conference every two years. What’s more, this 18th conference will be the most accessible, the most different and possibly best ever. (Excepting Eudora Welty’s touch, of course!)
Please give these writers — and the Southern Lit Alliance — your ears, eyes and a standing ovation.