Jerry Ward, who presented the keynote address on Richard Wright and read from his own poetry, during booksigning at Off Square Books.

University Chancellor Robert C. Khayat (left) and Stuart Bullion (center), chair of the Ole Miss Journalism Department, chat with Lucinda Robb following her presentation about working with the Our Mothers Before Us project at the National Archives.

Photo: UM Imaging Services

Participants in the session on Richard Wright, to whom the conference was dedicated, were (from left) Jerry W. Ward Jr., Michel Fabre, Keneth Kinnamon, Geneviève Fabre, Paul Oliver, and Hazel Rowley.

Journalist Jesse Holland enjoying a humorous story about Southern politics.

The “Link to History” panel was the occasion for the announcement of the Phil Hardin Foundation’s funding to provide each high school in Mississippi a copy of Our Mothers Before Us: Women and Democracy, 1789-1920, a new educational resource published by the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and Records Administration. Panelists were (from left) C. Thompson Wacaster, vice president of the Phil Hardin Foundation of Meridian, Mississippi; Ole Miss alumna Mary Lynn Kotz, a member of the board of directors for the National Archives Foundation; Lucinda D. Robb, director of the Our Mothers Before Us project before accepting a position with the Teaching Company; Alysha E. Black, an archivist and outreach specialist at the Center for Legislative Archives; Deborah Barker, director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women’s Studies and an English professor at the University of Mississippi; and Michael L. Gillette, director of the Center for Legislative Archives.

Brooks Haxton with his mother, novelist Ellen Douglas, who came to the conference to hear her son read from the most recent of his five collections of poetry, Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus.

Panelists for the “Writing Our Southern Mothers” session (from left) Jayne Anne Phillips (MotherKind), Rosemary Daniell (Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South), and Patricia Foster (All the Lost Girls: Confessions of a Southern Daughter)Panelists for the “Writing Our Southern Mothers” session (from left) Jayne Anne Phillips (MotherKind), Rosemary Daniell (Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South), and Patricia Foster (All the Lost Girls: Confessions of a Southern Daughter).

Kimberly Willis Holt, author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and other award-winning books for young readers, spoke at the conference and visited local schools as part of the Young Authors Fair sponsored by the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford.

Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic Inc., moderating the panel “Grove Press: Its First Half Century”.

Historian Allen Ballard signing Where I’m Bound, his recently published work of historical fiction, the first to focus solely on soldiers of an African American regiment in the Civil War.

Barry Hannah (left), writer in residence at the University of Mississippi, and Jim Harrison, the author of four volumes of novellas, including The Beast God Forgot to Invent, published by Atlantic Monthly Press, seven novels, seven collections of poetry, and a collection of nonfiction, Just Before Dark.

Nikky Finney, the author of two collections of poetry, On Wings Made of Gauze and Rice, and Heartwood, a collection of short stories written especially for literacy students.

“Writing Race and Politics in the South” panelists (left) Bill Minor, “dean of Mississippi journalists” whose columns were recently collected a volume titled Eyes on Mississippi, and Jesse James Holland Jr. (right), Ole Miss alumnus who was head of the Associated Press in Albany, New York, before moving to the AP bureau in Washington, D.C., with session moderator Charles Reagan Wilson.

Stewart O’Nan, whose story collection In the Walled City and novels Snow Angels, The Names of the Dead, The Speed Queen, A World Away, and A Prayer for the Dying have earned him numerous awards and Granta’s designation as one of America’s best young writers, signs copies of his new novel, Everyday People, at a booksigning sponsored by Square Books.

From left: Australian novelist Richard Flanagan (The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Death of a River Guide) and Tennessee author William Gay (The Long Home and Provinces of Night) take a break from signing books at Off Square Books.

Photographs by Doug McLain, except as noted.