Jamie M. Eubanks
JSU News Bureau
JACKSONVILLE -- January 16, 2002 --
"House Parties, Family Reunions and Dinner on the Ground"--these are all
well-known southern traditions. But they are also the theme of On the Brink
2002, Jacksonville State University's Eight Annual Conference of Emerging
Southern Writers.
On the Brink features great southern writers who have experienced and write
about these southern traditions. These writers work in genres ranging from
children's literature, personal memoir, history, travel narrative,
adventure and
romance novel.
Authors who will attend On the Brink and read from their work include:
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Marlin Barton, of Montgomery, who wrote The Dry Well, a collection of short stories
set in fictional Alabama communities. Barton serves as the assistant director
of Writing Our Stories. This program allows juvenile offenders to tell their
tales.
-
Divining Rod is Michael Knight's first novel. But the explosive beginning
proves he is no amateur. He, too, is an Alabama native, but currently
serves as
assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Knight has also been published in GQ, Esquire and The New Yorker.
-
Jeanie Thompson, a native of Decatur, Alabama, founded the Black Warrior Review
while a student at the University of Alabama. She has taught at the University
of New Orleans and the Center for the Creative Arts. Witness, a collection of
her poems, received a Benjamin Franklin Award. At On the Brink, she will read
from her latest collection of poems, White for Harvest.
-
Trouble No More--Stories by Anthony Grooms won the Lillian Smith Award from
the
Southern Regional Council. Grooms is an associate professor of creative
writing
at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. This Atlanta author sheds light on
the
South and civil rights in this collection of short stories. One of Grooms'
characters struggles with the idea of working and raising a family in a
white-run society: "God gave white folks everything. Money, cars, good hair."
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Howard Bahr's, The Year of Jubilo, was named the New York Times' Notable Book.
It tells about the year immediately following the end of the Civil War, before
reconstruction has really had a chance to settle in. It tells of a time when
things weren't as they seemed. Bahr, a Meridian, Mississippi native, is known for
his
use of the English language.
-
Self-proclaimed "Southernized Yankee," Ellen Edwards Kennedy still writes about
the South. Born in Alabama, this writer traveled all across the country. She
and her husband currently reside in North Carolina. Her novel, Irregardless of
Murder, tells of a teacher who finds herself in an educator's worst nightmare.
She discovers a dead student.
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Shanghi, Alabama native Carroll Dale Short has worn many hats, including teacher,
newspaper editor, layout design, radio DJ and corporate communications
consultant. He became Redbook's first ever winner of the National Young Writer
Award. He is the author of seven books and currently lives in Birmingham,
where
he is working on a new novel. He will read from The Shining Path.
-
Music of Falling Water by Julie Oliver is the southern tale of mystery, death
and life that revolves around a water wheel. Oliver, who lives in Montgomery,
wrote Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky and Seventeen Times as High as the Moon.
Two of her stage plays, Strings and Many Winters, Many Moons, have been
performed by local theatres.
The conference will be February 9, 2002, on the 11th floor of the Houston Cole
Library at JSU. Please pre-register by February 1, 2002. Registration fee is
$40.00, $15.00 for full-time students.
You may mail a check to:
Gena Christopher
ATTN: Department of English
Jacksonville State University
700 Pelham Rd. North
Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602
For further information, contact Gena Christopher at 256-782-5856 or
genac@jsu.edu
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