The University of Mississippi will host the 2024 Southern Literary Festival from April 4-6. The event is free to the general public.
Senior Lecturer in English Beth Spencer and Writing Enriched Curriculum Senior Lecturer Angela Green are this year’s faculty organizers. Spencer explained that the festival began in 1937 at Mississippi’s Blue Mountain College, now known as Blue Mountain Christian University, in Blue Mountain, Miss. 21 schools are involved, and UM is hosting the festival for the first time since 2014.
“The mission of the organization is to foster community between established Southern writers and young undergraduate writers,” Spencer said.
Victoria Hulbert, a graduate student in UM’s English department, is organizing the festival along with Spencer and Green.
Hulbert shed light on her involvement in planning the upcoming festivities.
“I’ve been working with the undergrads at Ole Miss who are interning at the festival. I’m kind of like the leader of the interns,” Hulbert said.
Hulbert also stressed the importance and significance of the Southern Literary Festival in relation to Southern writers.
“This is the 85th year,” Hulbert said. “There are early writers attached to the festival, big names like Flannery O’Connor. It has a really cool history.”
In addition to its connection to Southern literary history, the festival helps to expand the already robust creative writing scene in Oxford.
“I think it’s an exciting time for creative writing on this campus because of the introduction of the (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in creative writing. This is the first year that the first cohort of undergraduate writers are going to (attend the festival),” Hulbert said.
While Oxford is known for its literary history, Hulbert expressed that Mississippi as a whole has a tendency to overlook the arts.
“It’s just really important, when we’re in a state where the arts and creative writing is not always prioritized, for this university to be taking a stand and being like, ‘It’s important to us,’” Hulbert said.
Spencer noted that this year’s festival overlaps with the Oxford Conference for the Book, a literary gathering unique to the town — a rare treat for writers and literature lovers alike.
“There will be no end of choices, should you be interested in creative writing, wanting to meet authors or just enjoying different experiences with both of these conferences,” Spencer said. Andre Dubus III, who has published nine novels, will serve as the Southern Literary Festival’s keynote speaker.
At the festival’s core is the undergraduate writing competition. University-wide competitions are held at the member schools in the categories of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, formal essay and literary magazine. The top submissions in each genre advance to the regional competition, whose winners are asked to speak and share their work at the festival.
“Truly, the heart of the festival is undergraduate writers and celebrating their work,” Spencer said.
The events kick off on Thursday night, April 4, with an Undergraduate Open Mic Night.
“I want to encourage students who are interested at all to come on Thursday night, especially,” Hulbert said. “It’s going to be a party, (and) it’s going to be an opening celebration.
The J.D. Williams Library’s Department of Archives and Special Collections has curated festival memorabilia dating back 80 years to prepare for the festival’s arrival. The exhibit includes previous years’ programs and schedules, information about past winners and promotional posters for past events.
“We are grateful for the work of Jennifer Ford and Sarah Catherine Glass, who did a wonderful job putting it together,” Spencer said. “They found a hand-written note from Mr. (William) Faulkner. Go check it out!”
The exhibit is now on display on the second floor of the J.D. Williams Library near the Blues Archive.
“We have events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and (the festival) invites a bunch of undergraduate writers that are excited about fiction, poetry and playwriting, and we have breakout sessions, so they can attend events,” Hulbert said.
UM faculty, including Tommy Franklin and Derrick Harriell, will lead sessions and read some of their work.
Also with a significant role in the festival is K. Corley Taylor, a senior multidisciplinary studies major from Tupelo, Miss. Last year, Taylor won third place in the one-act play genre and was invited to emcee the open mic event for this year’s festival.
Taylor is very enthusiastic about this year’s festival.
“There are always opportunities to breathe new life into art in Mississippi,” Taylor said. “When I started writing in Oxford, I could feel something in the air, an energy. So we are getting to host an event that brings people in and lets them live in that energy, lets them experience it.”
Taylor hopes to continue to participate in the festival in the future. She believes Mississippi storytelling is founded on a sense of community and on older generations building up the younger generations.
“I think that any chance I have to bring up the Mississippi storyteller — to help them find their footing, to see them advance — I always want to be a part of that,” Taylor said. “If you aren’t changed by the end of the festival in some way, you didn’t come.”
This article is part of a team-up week activity that the arts and culture section of The Daily Mississippian is hosting. Each arts and culture staff writer collaborated with another writer to complete an article for this week of content.
