COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Novelist Steve Yarbrough returns as the keynote author at the 30th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, Oct. 18-20.
Yarbrough has received many awards for his fiction, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the Richard Wright Award and the Robert Penn Warren Award. He has been a frequent guest in the symposium’s early years featuring his three story collections and will read from his seventh novel, “The Unmade World,” published in January.
Beginning with a fateful accident in Krakow, Poland, Yarbrough’s novel is a fitting opening for this year’s symposium theme, “‘As If the Ear of the World Listened’: Celebrating Thirty Years of Southern Stories,” inspired by Eudora Welty’s novel “Delta Wedding.” Yarbrough deftly weaves international politics, intrigue and an intimate portrayal of “two ordinary men,” which Publisher’s Weekly has dubbed an “intricate and satisfying novel,” while naming it a “Best Book.”
Other writers who will return to this year’s symposium include: Minrose Gwin with her novel “Promise,” Pauline Kaldas with the essay collection “Looking Both Ways” and poet Adam Vines with his collection “Out of Speech.”
Writers who are new to the symposium will include The W’s own T. K. Lee with his debut collection of poetry “To Square a Circle,” Mike Smith of Delta State University with the memoir “And There was Evening and There was Morning,” poet Kamilah Aisha Moon with her collection “Starshine and Clay” and novelist Anthony Grooms, author of “Bombingham” and “The Vain Conversation.”
The Welty Prize will also be awarded for a book on Women’s Studies, Southern Studies, or Literary Studies, with a reading by the prize-winning author.
Along with the published authors, The W will welcome five high school students, winners of the Eudora Welty Ephemera Prize for fiction, essay or poetry. The selected students will be invited to read their work and have lunch with the authors.
All symposium events will be held on campus and are free and open to the public. The symposium is made possible through the generous support of the Robert M. Hearin Foundation.
For updates and more information on our authors and the Ephemera Prize, see the Symposium website http://www.muw.edu/welty.
Contact: Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg
Mississippi University for Women
Dept. of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy
1100 College St., P.O. Box MUW-1634
Columbus MS 39701
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2018