This year marks the seventh for the Oxford Conference for the Book. As always, a large and varied collection of writers, scholars, and industry insiders will converge on Oxford--April 7-9, 2000--for readings, lectures, and discussions (and don’t forget parties) on current issues affecting book culture. There will also be a book signing featuring all the conference authors on Saturday night.

This year’s conference is dedicated to the late Willie Morris (1934-1999) in recognition of his contributions to American letters.

The Novelists...
As in years past, one of the conference’s biggest draws has been the quality and quantity of its fiction writers. The authors are in no short supply again this year, the list of literary figures reading like a who’s who of novelists on the rise. Several writers, who have turned up in Oxford quite often over the past year, will participate on panels, including Steve Yarbrough (The Oxygen Man), William Gay (The Long Home), and Darcey Steinke (Jesus Saves). Mississippi Delta hero Lewis Nordan will be on hand to discuss his new memoir, Boy with Loaded Gun, which presents a strangely familiar landscape to fans of his bizarre and fantastic novels. Former bookseller Karl Ackerman returns with a highly favored new book (Dear Will), along with Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler (Mr. Spaceman) and Alabama bestseller Melinda Haynes (Mother of Pearl). Florida writer Connie May Fowler has a new novel (Remembering Blue), as does Janice Daugharty (Like a Sister), of Georgia. Mississippi mystery writer Greg Iles (The Quiet Game) will drop in to speak on Southern politics. And last but not least, the indelible panel discussion leadership of Barry Hannah remains one of the conference's most endearing performances.

The Publishers...
This year's publisher spotlight will be on MacMurray & Beck, the upstart house that came onto the scene strong last year with several big titles, including The Oxygen Man, The Long Home, and the National Book Award nominee Hummingbird House. Several of the folks who made this house so successful last year--publisher Fred Ramey, editor Greg Michalson, and marketing director Caitlin Hamilton--will discuss the business. Grove-Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin will speak on working one's way into print. And Knopf editor Jordan Pavlin will be along for the ride as well.

The Poets...
Readings and remarks by noted poets have been a mainstay in the conference program, and this year's slate features Robert Bly, a major American poet whose latest book is Eating the Honey of Words. Mississippi ties link the other featured poets, including University of Southern Mississippi creative writing teacher Angela Ball (The Museum of the Revolution); Brooks Haxton (Dances for Flute and Thunder), Delta native and son of Ellen Douglas; and the impressive newcomer Claude Wilkinson (Reading the Earth), a poet and painter from Nesbit.

The Newcomers...
Part of the book conference fun is meeting and hearing young writers who bound into town and astound us with their fresh visions. This year's newcomers hold promise, as evidenced by their fine books, which we’ve already devoured. Among them are Nathan Englander, who published one of last year's most talked-about debuts, the short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. He’ll be visiting from Jerusalem, while Richard Flanagan of Tasmania flies into town after having garnered accolades all over the world for his new novel, The Sound of One Hand Clapping. Rosa Shand's new novel of Africa, The Gravity of Sunlight, is mustering strong praise from big-time writers, while newcomer Jeffrey Lent of Vermont has written an ambitious first novel, In the Fall, which is destined to be a hit this spring. Janisse Ray, author of the SEBA Award-winning memoir Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, will visit from Georgia. And Elizabeth Mitchell, a former executive editor at George magazine, is causing waves with her top-rate journalistic endeavor, W: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty.

The Chroniclers...
Journalists and cultural historians have always provided a great foil to the fictionalists, and are often as equally weird and interesting. This year’s slate features an old favorite, New York Times correspondent Rick Bragg (All Over But the Shoutin’ ), whose new collection of articles, Somebody Told Me, is due this spring. Also returning to the conference will be William F. Winter who, with others, will discuss Southern politics on a panel moderated by Curtis Wilkie, the Boston Globe reporter and coauthor of Arkansas Mischief: The Birth of a National Scandal with Jim McDougal. Anthony Walton (Mississippi), the esteemed poet, memoirist, and journalist, will be relating his experiences in autobiography, as will Endesha Ida Mae Holland, a theatre instructor at the University of Southern California and author of the revered memoir From the Mississippi Delta, and Constance W. Curry, recent author of Aaron Henry: The Fire Ever Burning. Also, John M. Barry, author of the immensely popular Rising Tide, will speak on books and the environment. And finally Alice Faye Duncan, teacher, librarian, and children's author (Willie Jerome), will speak on readers of tomorrow with Elaine H. Scott, a leader in national literacy and library programs, and Richard Boyd, interim director of the new Barksdale Reading Institute.

The Scholars...
The conference is supported by a backbone of academic writers whose conversation on a wide range of topics--from music to race to politics--makes for the most disciplined study of literary culture and its contribution to society. One of these discussions will be a panel on communities featuring Pete Daniel, a Smithsonian curator and author of Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s; Gay Gomez, a cultural geographer at McNeese State University and the author of A Wetlands Biography; and University of Mississippi professor David Wharton, who has authored and photographed The Soul of a Small Texas Town: Photographs, Memories, and History from McDade. Also, David Shields, a professor at the Citadel, will give a presentation on print culture in the early South.

Continuing a conference tradition, the panel on music and race will feature W. T. Lehman (Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop), James Salem (The Late Great Johnny Ace), BMI archivist David Sanjek, Brian Ward (Just My Soul Responding), and Craig Werner (A Change Is Gonna Come). Moderating and participating in the various panel discussions are several distinguished professors at the University of Mississippi: Michael Bertrand, Michael Dean, Jay Watson (Forensic Fictions), Dan Williams (Pillars of Salt), and Charles Reagan Wilson (Judgment and Grace in Dixie).

Speaking on Willie Morris will be Ted Ownby (American Dreams in Mississippi), professor emeritus David G. Sansing (The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History), and Masaru Inoue, a visiting professor from Japan. Morris’s widow, JoAnne Prichard Morris, will also speak.

Sponsors and Supporters...
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Journalism, McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College, University Lecture Series, Grisham Visiting Writers Program, John Davis Williams Library, Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, and Square Books. Partially funded by the University of Mississippi and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, and the City of Oxford.

Find Out More...
To listen to recordings of the speakers, visit the official Seventh Oxford Conference for the Book web site at: www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/ocb/

Jamie Kornegay