Welcome to the Mississippi Writers Page Newsletter for February 20-26, 2004

In this issue:

• This week in Mississippi Literary History
• Author events: readings, book signings, and appearances
• On the horizon: events coming up in the weeks and months ahead

The following events all happened during this week in Mississippi history.

Year:
1844: The Mississippi legislature chartered the University of Mississippi, the first public institution of higher learning in the state. The university would be built in Oxford, whose townspeople had named it that in hope of attracting the state university. (Feb. 24)

1849: Writer Katherine Sherwood Bonner was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. (Feb. 26)

1870: The state of Mississippi was readmitted to the United States after the Civil War, the ninth state to do so. (Feb. 23)

1880: Educator David Edgar Guyton was born in Blue Mountain, Mississippi. (Feb. 21)

1894: Historian William Leo Hansberry was born in Gloster, Mississippi. (Feb. 25)

1905: Novelist Alice Walworth Graham was born in Natchez, Mississippi. (Feb. 24)

1918: Frank E. Smith, a former U.S. Congressman, newspaper editor, TVA administrator, and educator, was born in Sidon, Mississippi. (Feb. 21)

1919: Baptist theologian Fred D. Howard was born in Fulton, Mississippi. (Feb. 25)

1920: Historian John Hebron Moore was born in Greenville, Mississippi. (Feb. 26)

1926: The novel Soldiers’ Pay, by William Faulkner (his first), was published by Boni & Liveright. (Feb. 25)

1935: Novelist Ellen Gilchrist was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. (Feb. 20)

1936: Business consultant James A. Vaughan was born in Shannon, Mississippi. (Feb. 21)

1937: Eudora Welty’s story “Old Mr. Grenada” was accepted for publication by the Southern Review; the story was retitled “Old Mr. Marblehall” in A Curtain of Green. (Feb. 22)

1939: Historian Steven E. Ozment was born in MacComb, Mississippi. (Feb. 21)

1943: English professor Noel Polk was born in Picayune, Mississippi. (Feb. 23)

1949: Jason Berry, writer and press secretary for Charles Evers during his campaign for the Mississippi governorship in 1971, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Feb. 20)

1954: English professor and fiction writer Danny Duncan Collum was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. (Feb. 26)

1956: Tennessee Williams received notification from the Group Theatre in New York City that he had been awarded $100 for three one-act plays under the title American Blues which included “Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry,” “The Dark Room,” and “The Case of the Crushed Petunias.” Williams had listed his birth year as 1914 in order to qualify for the contest limited to those aged 25 and under. He was actually 28 years old at the time. (Feb. 20)

1983: Playwright Tennessee Williams choked to death at age 71 on the cap of an eyedropper he probably mistook for a sleeping pill at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. (Feb. 24)

1984: Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings was published by Harvard University Press in Cambridge. (Feb. 20)