The Center is joining forces with the award-winning Natchez Literary Celebration, becoming the fourth sponsor of the annual event. "We are truly excited and delighted to have such a prestigious organization cosponsor our literary celebration," said Carolyn Vance Smith, one of the founders and a current cochair of the NLC. Other sponsors are Copiah-Lincoln Community College, the National Park Service, and the Natchez National Historical Park.

"It is with special pleasure that we will cosponsor the Natchez Literary Celebration," said Ann Abadie, acting director of the Center. "We have supported the celebration since its founding in 1990 and are honored to join the other sponsors in this important program. Through the years, the celebration has drawn both local and national audiences and has provided thousands of people with a new and enriched understanding of our region's literary experience."

The ninth NLC will be June 4-6, 1998, with the theme "The South: Its Land and Its Literature." More than a dozen scholars, writers, and lecturers have confirmed presentations. These include Joseph Blotner, who will talk about the influence of land on the writings of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren; Clifton Taulbert, who will discuss the Mississippi Delta; Courtney Parker, who will speak about regional foods; and Felder Rushing, who will talk about yard art and old-time garden objects.

Blotner is the author of biographies of Faulkner and Warren. Taulbert's books include Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. Parker, an award-winning food journalist, is the author of How to Eat Like a Southerner and Live to Tell the Tale. Rushing is the author of four books on Southern gardens, one of which, Passalong Plants, won a national award for the best gardening book in America in 1994.

Patricia Galloway, special projects officer at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, will talk about Choctaw Indians and their relation to the land, and historian James Wiggins Jr. will present "Land Fever: Settling the Old Southwest." John Michael Vlach, author of Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery, will present "Reflections of Antebellum Society in Southern Landscapes." Also confirmed as speakers are landscape architects Edward L. Blake Jr., whose talk is titled "Time, Place, and a Landscape's Architecture," and Gordon W. Chappell, who will speak on the use of the land by early settlers for both practical and aesthetic purposes.

In addition to Blotner, literary scholars signed up for the program include Peggy W. Prenshaw, who will discuss Southern women writers; Sterling Plumpp, who will speak on blues and Mississippi writers; and Jerry Ward, who will give a presentation on Mississippi autobiographical voices. Also, Kenneth W. Holditch and Colby Kullman will discuss the use of the land in the dramas of Tennessee Williams, and Patrick Samway, S.J., will examine the influence of New Orleans on Southern Writers.

For additional information, contact Carolyn Vance Smith, P.O. Box 894, Natchez, MS 39121-0894; telephone 601-446-5874; fax 601-446-1296. Tickets are available by calling Natchez Box Office at 800-862-3259. For information about lodging and other arrangements, call the Natchez Convention and Visitor Bureau at 800-647-6742.