Join me on March 26th from 1 p.m. to 2.15 p.m. ET for the Lost Southern Voices Festival. I’m presenting last in this panel: Condensed Careers: Poetry, Scandal, and Southern Gothic. Two William Gay books are up for raffle for local residents. Registration information is below. This event is entirely online, but you do need to register.

To specifically register for my panel (but consider signing up for more): Revival:Lost Southern Voices 2021: Session 2 Tickets, Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite

About the festival: The festival is for readers and celebrates lost or underappreciated Southern writers’ work. Every year, invited authors and scholars discuss writers whose literary voices no longer receive the attention and reading they deserve. The public, scholars, students, writers, and readers are welcome to join us as we revive these lost voices.

This year, the festival is back with a full virtual festival next week, from Wednesday, March 24, 2021, to Saturday, March 27, 2021! Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is the keynote speaker, and five additional sessions, complete with Q&As and virtual door prizes, are planned. More information on the raffles is below, but know you must provide your address during registration to be entered, and you must be a resident of DeKalb, Fulton, or Gwinnett. The keynote, which is sponsored by Perimeter College’s Department of English, Honors College, and Student Affairs, and is in conjunction with Revival: Lost Southern Voices, does not include a raffle.

Scroll on for the full festival schedule. You can visit the Facebook event here for the registration links, and you’ll find them all below. You must register for each event separately. For the keynote, you will register through Georgia State University’s website. For the rest of the sessions, you will register on Eventbrite. Again, all the links are available here and below. Once you’ve registered for a session, you’ll receive an email with the link to view that presentation.

Join to hear presentations about William Gay, Ella Gertrude, Clanton Thomas, Alice Walker, Padgett Powell, and so many more. On Saturday, March 27th, the entire session devoted to James Baldwin’s work, and while he may not be “lost” in the traditional sense, this panel will explore the many important ways his work is being rediscovered and taught in modern times. You won’t want to miss it.

Full schedule:

Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Keynote
1 p.m. ET, WebEx
Natasha Trethewey, former U.S. Poet Laureate
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
Register here.

Thursday, March 25, 2021
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Art Vs. Artist: Works of Merit and the Controversial Authors Who Wrote Them
Moderator: Gina Flowers
Chip Bell: Augustus Longstreet, lawyer and writer
Janet Williams: Sidney Lanier
Melissa Swindell: Harry Stillwell Edwards, novelist and journalist
Register here.

Friday, March 26, 2021
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Condensed Careers: Poetry, Scandal, and Southern Gothic
Moderator: Joe Davich
Eli Arnold: Ernest Hartsock, poet
Matt Dischinger: Brad Vice, fiction writer
Dawn Major: William Gay, fiction writer
Register here.

4 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Unruly Women in Southern History
Moderator: Kari Miller
Brenda Bynum: Helen Matthews Lewis, sociologist and historian
Caleb Johnson: Kathryn Tucker Windham, folklorist and journalist
Carolyn Curry: Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, political figure
Register here.

Saturday, March 27, 2021
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Reading Baldwin in the Twenty-first Century
Moderator: Laura McCarty
Tareva Johnson: The Fire Next Time
Jamil Zainaldin: “Stranger in the Village”
Stephane Dunn: Cinematic Adaptations
Register here.

4 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Reckoning with the South throughout the Twentieth Century
Moderator: Jessica Handler
James Stamant: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, novelist
Valerie Boyd: Alice Walker, novelist and short story writer
Christopher Merkner: Padgett Powell, novelist and short story writer
Register here.

About the Raffles: Books will be raffled at the end of sessions 1-5. Trethewey’s Keynote is excluded from raffles. One raffle for a gift card to Revival (a restaurant in Downtown Decatur), at the end of the festival, will include all festival attendees. Books will be raffled off at the end of each session as well, for attendees of that session. There is no cost for entry. Entrants must be 18 years old or older, and provide a home address for receipt of prizes. Due to the pandemic, prizes will be delivered contact-free to the home address provided, or pick-up may be arranged. Entrants must be residents of Georgia, USA, and must reside in DeKalb, Fulton, or Gwinnett counties. Residents of other metro Atlanta counties will be considered on a case by case basis. One entry is permitted per person, per household, each session.

Follow the festival on Facebook at @RevivalLostSouthernVoices for more updates! You may also follow the festival on Twitter (@RevivalLost) and Instagram (revivallsv).

See you there!

As you know, your Zoom panel takes place Friday, March 26, 2021, at 1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. ET. If you’d like to advertise the link to your specific panel, you can direct people to register on its Eventbrite page, here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/revivallost-southern-voices-2021-session-2-tickets-144080036267?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&fbclid=IwAR32gkAWb_jBjvZrwjkDv4rWWje4n_IU1U2m-clBOJ5cQ63BQTCMkRKzyIw.