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The SpeakersClaiborne Barksdale is executive directorof the Barksdale Reading Institute at theUniversity of Mississippi. He has practicedlaw in Jackson, served as legislativecoordinator for Senator Thad Cochran,spent a year as a clerk for the Fifth CircuitCourt of Appeals, and served as counsel forcommunications companies since 1983.Jim Dees is the host of Thacker Mountain Radio,a literature and music program on MississippiPublic Broadcasting. He is the author of Liesand Other Truths, a collection of his newspapercolumns, and the editor of They Write among Us,a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and verse byOxford, Mississippi, writers.Margaret-Love Denman, coordinatorof off-campus writing programs at theUniversity of Mississippi, was previouslythe director of the creative writing programat the University of New Hampshire for12 years. She is the author of the novelsA Scrambling after Circumstance and Daily,Before Your Eyes. With novelist Barbara Shoup she published theinterview collection Novel Ideas: Contemporary Writers Share theCreative Process and Story Matters, a writing textbook.Perry SmithSven Birkerts is the author of TheGutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading inan Electronic Age and seven other books,including The Art of Time in Memoir: Then,Again. He writes for the New York TimesBook Review, the Boston Globe, and theWashington Post. He is the director of theBennington College Writing Seminars in Vermont and the editorof the literary journal Agni, published at Boston University.Kevin Brockmeier is the author of thenovels The Brief History of the Dead, TheTruth about Celia, and The Illumination as wellas the story collection Things That Fall fromthe Sky and two children’s novels. His storieshave appeared in the New Yorker, GeorgiaReview, and numerous other publications.Recently he was named one of Granta magazine’s Best YoungAmerican Novelists. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.Benjamin KrainJennifer Drouin teaches Shakespeare andRenaissance drama at the University ofAlabama. She is working on a book entitledShakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, andAdaptation and an online database entitledShakespeare au/in Québec.Ally Condie, a teacher who lives in SaltLake City with her husband and threesons, wrote five novels for young readerspublished by small Utah companies beforePenguin featured her book Matched atBookExpo America 2010. Matched hasbecome immensely popular since its releasein November. Condie’s earlier titles are Yearbook, First Day,Reunion, Freshman for President, and Being Sixteen.Brook AndreoliRick Cleveland has been writing aboutsports for 43 years, 30 years at the ClarionLedger in Jackson, Mississippi. He is theauthor of three books: It’s More Than aGame, a collection of his newspaper articles;Vaught: The Man and His Legacy, about thelegendary University of Mississippi footballcoach Johnny Vaught; and Boo: A Life in Baseball, Well-Lived,about the life of David “Boo” Ferriss and his impact on the sport.William Dunlap has distinguished himselfas an artist, arts commentator, and educatorsince receiving his MFA from the Universityof Mississippi in 1969. His work can befound at museums across the nation and atUnited States embassies throughout the world.Dunlap, the book about his work, won the2007 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Visual Arts Award.W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of twobooks: Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey intoMississippi’s Dark Past and The House atthe End of the Road: The Story of ThreeGenerations of an Interracial Family in theAmerican South. He has contributed articlesto the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune,Preservation, and National Public Radio. He has been director ofpublishing at the Library of Congress since 1995.

Jody HoyJoyce Farmer is the author of Special Exits,a 208-page graphic memoir that detailsthe decline and death of her elderly parentsand addresses caregiving issues for theelderly today. She was a pioneer of feministunderground comics with the Tits and Clitsseries, published between 1972 and 1985.Farmer’s work has also appeared in Wimmen’s Comix and otheralternative publications.Maude Schuyler ClayBeth Ann Fennelly is the author of threepoetry collections, Open House, TenderHooks, and Unmentionables, and a book ofessays, Great with Child: Letters to a YoungMother. Fennelly has three times beenincluded in the Best American Poetry seriesand is a winner of a Pushcart Prize. She isan associate professor of English at the University of Mississippi.Tom Franklin is a widely published authorof fiction and nonfiction. He has publishedthe story collection Poachers and three novels,Hell at the Breech, Smonk, and CrookedLetter, Crooked Letter. Recipient of a 2001Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in theUniversity of Mississippi’s MFA program.Mary Hayes is an assistant professor ofEnglish and director of Medieval Studies atthe University of Mississippi. Her researchinterests include the history of the senses/sound theory and magic and the occult. Sheis currently involved in the celebration of the400th anniversary of the publication of theKing James Bible.Julia EvanWil Haygood is a journalist and the authorof five books, most recently, Sweet Thunder,a 2009 biography of the great prize-fighterSugar Ray Robinson. Currently a staff writerfor the Style section of the Washington Post,Haygood previously served for 17 years asa feature writer and national and foreigncorrespondent for the Boston Globe.Gregory Heyworth, associate professorEnglish at the University of Mississippi, is theauthor of Desiring Bodies: Ovidian Romanceand the Cult of Form. He developed a portable,digital imaging laboratory to recover a uniquemedieval manuscript damaged during WorldWar II, contributing to medieval studies andoffering possibilities for helping recover other manuscripts such asWilliam Faulkner’s fire-damaged poems.Richard Howorth is founder of SquareBooks in Oxford, Mississippi, and pastpresident of the American BooksellersAssociation. He served as mayor of Oxfordfrom 2001 to 2009 and was honored with the2008 Authors Guild Award for DistinguishedService to the Literary Community.Daniel W. Jones has been chancellor of theUniversity of Mississippi since July 2009.He previously served as vice chancellorfor health affairs, dean of the Schoolof Medicine, and Herbert G. LangfordProfessor of Medicine at the UniversityMedical Center (UMMC) in Jackson. Anative Mississippian, he graduated from Mississippi College in1971 and earned his MD and completed residency training atUMMC.Norman W. Jones is associate professor andEnglish Department coordinator at OhioState University, where he teaches courses in20th- and 21st-century American literature,film, and the Bible. He is coeditor of TheKing James Bible after Four Hundred Years:Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influenceand the author of Gay and Lesbian HistoricalFiction: Sexual Mystery and Post-Secular Narrative.Ivo Kamps is chair of the EnglishDepartment at the University of Mississippi.He is the author of a book on Stuart dramaand editor of Materialist Shakespeare,Shakespeare Left and Right, and six othercollections. The Early Modern CulturalSeries, which he and Jean Howard edit forPalgrave Press, has 25 titles in print so far.

Sarah Kennedy is the author of six booksof poetry, including Home Remedies, AWitch’s Dictionary, and Consider the Lilies.She is the coeditor of the anthology CommonWealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia anda contributing editor for Pleiades and WestBranch. She is the book review editor forShenandoah and teaches at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton,Virginia.Jamie Kornegay is owner of Turnrow BookCompany in Greenwood, Mississippi. Hisfiction has appeared in Stories from the BlueMoon Café II, The Alumni Grill, and TheyWrite among Us: New Stories and Essaysfrom the Best of Oxford Writers.Michael Kupperman is an Americancartoonist and illustrator whose workhas appeared in magazines ranging fromthe New Yorker to Fortune, newspapers fromthe New York Times to the Village Voice,and numerous books. His work has beencollected in Snake ’n’ Bacon’s CartoonCabaret and Tales Designed to Thrizzle.Michael McFee is professor of English anddirector of the Creative Writing Program atthe University of North Carolina at ChapelHill. He is the author of nine collections ofpoetry, most recently, The Smallest Talk, andThe Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essaysand an Interview. McFee is also the editor ofThis Is Where We Live: Short Stories by 25 Contemporary NorthCarolina Writers and two other anthologies.Kathryn McKee is McMullan AssociateProfessor of Southern Studies and associateprofessor of English at the University ofMississippi. She has published articles aboutvarious Southern writers and is coeditorof a special issue of the journal AmericanJoe Matt studied at the PhiladelphiaCollege of Art and then started drawingautobiographical comic strips that werecollected in 1992 and published asPeepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt.Peepshow has subsequently been collected asThe Poor Bastard, Fair Weather, and Spent.In addition to cartooning, Matt has developed a large collectionof vintage Gasoline Alley comic strips.Téa Obreht was born in the formerYugoslavia, spent her childhood in Cyprusand Egypt, and immigrated to the UnitedStates in 1997. An excerpt from her newlypublished debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife,appeared in 2010 in the New Yorker, whichnamed her as one of the 20 best Americanfiction writers under 40. She was also included in the NationalBook Foundation’s “5 Under 35” list.Thomas Oliphant is the author of Prayingfor Gil Hodges, a book about the BrooklynDodgers and their championship season.Oliphant began as a correspondent forthe Boston Globe in 1968 and was itsWashington columnist from 1989 untilhis retirement in 2007. A noted politicalcommentator, he was a frequent guest on The News Hour withJim Lehrer.Rosemary Oliphant-Ingham is professorand coordinator of English education at theUniversity of Mississippi, where she teacheschildren’s and adolescent literature. She haspublished a biographical sketch of LouisaMay Alcott and a biography of Karen Hesse.Ted Ownby is professor of SouthernStudies and history and director of theCenter for the Study of Southern Culture.He is the author of Subduing Satan:Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in theRural South, 1965–1920 and AmericanDreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty,and Culture, 1830–1998.Beowulf SheehanDorothy Knight, a native of Kingsland,Georgia, received a BA in English fromValdosta State University in 2006. She isnow an MFA student in the University ofMississippi’s poetry program.Literature called “Global Contexts, Local Literatures” and thecollection American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary.

Lyn Roberts has been manager of SquareBooks since completing her law degree at theUniversity of Mississippi. She is a memberof the planning committee for the OxfordConference for the Book and helps coordinatearrangements for the annual program.Karen Russell was featured in the NewYorker’s debut fiction issue and named a2009 National Book Foundation “5 Under35” young author honoree for her first book,the story collection St. Lucy’s Home for GirlsRaised by Wolves. Her stories have appearedin several magazines and in The BestAmerican Short Stories (2007 and 2008). Russell’s newlypublished first novel, Swamplandia!, tells about a family ofalligator wrestlers in the Florida swamp.Susan Phillips is director of the LafayetteCounty Literacy Council and director ofDiscovery Day School in Oxford. A nativeOxonian and a graduate of the Universityof Mississippi, she has taught readingand creative writing to students fromkindergarten to the university level.Peggy Whitman Prenshaw teaches atMillsaps College and is the former Fred C.Frey Chair of Southern Studies at LouisianaState University. She is author and editorof volumes on Eudora Welty, ElizabethSpencer, contemporary Southern womenwriters, and Southern cultural history. HerComposing Selves: Southern Women and Autobiography receivedthe 2011 Jules and Frances Landry Award, given annually to thebest new book in Southern Studies published by LSU Press.Elaine H. Scott is former chair of theArkansas State Board of Education, amember of the Education Commissionof the States (1987–1997), and a leaderin several organizations concerned witheducation, teacher training, libraries, andliteracy. She has worked with the Reading IsFundamental program since 1974 and received the RIF Leaderfor Literacy Award in 1994.R. T. Smith is writer in residence atWashington and Lee University where healso edits Shenandoah and teaches fictionwriting. He recently published two volumesof stories, The Calaboose Epistles and UkeRivers Delivers. His 12 collections of poetryinclude Outlaw Style and Messenger, both ofwhich received the Library of Virginia Poetry Book Award.Julia Rholes is dean of libraries at theUniversity of Mississippi where she leadsefforts to develop distinctive researchcollections and innovative library servicesand programs. She has held elected positionswithin the American Library Association,the Association of Southeastern ResearchLibraries, and the EPSCOR Science Information Group(ESIG).Jeff VespaTravis Smith is a first-year Grisham Fellow inthe University of Mississippi MFA program.He completed a minor in creative writing atthe University of North Carolina, Chapel Hillin 2009. His poems have been published inTar River Poetry, storySouth, and Wag’s Revue.Justin Taylor is the author of The Gospel ofAnarchy and the story collection EverythingHere Is the Best Thing Ever. He also editedthe short fiction anthology The ApocalypseReader and coedited The Word Made Flesh:Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide.Bill HaywardMark Richard is the author of twocollections of stories, The Ice at the Bottomof the World and Charity, the novel Fishboy:A Ghost Story, and scripts for film andtelevision. His newly published memoir,House of Prayer No. 2, tells the story of hislife beginning as a “special child” growing upamid racial tension and religious fervor in the American South.Richard was John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at theUniversity of Mississippi in 1994–1995.Michael LionstarJack Pendarvis is the author of the novelAwesome, two collections of stories, TheMysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure andYour Body Is Changing, and jackpendarvis.blogspot.com. He is a columnist for OxfordAmerican and the Believer. His work hasappeared in McSweeney’s, the New YorkTimes, and the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology. He teachescreative writing at the University of Mississippi.

Richard Tillinghast is the author of 10collections of poems and three nonfictionworks, including Damaged Grandeur, acritical memoir of Robert Lowell, with whomhe studied at Harvard, and Finding Ireland:A Poet’s Explorations of Irish Literature andCulture. A native of Memphis, Tennessee,Tillinghast now lives in South Tipperary, Ireland.Natasha Trethewey is the author ofthree poetry collections—Domestic Work,Bellocq’s Ophelia, and Native Guard, forwhich she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Herlatest book, Beyond Katrina, is a movingand personal portrait of her home on theMississippi Gulf Coast and her family’sstruggle to recover from the hurricane’s devastation. She holdsthe Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at EmoryUniversity.Jon Voelkel lived in Peru, Costa Rica,and Colombia before going to college inMinneapolis and to business school inBarcelona. After working in advertisingagencies in Spain, Holland, and England,he started an agency in London with fourother partners, one of whom became hiswife. In 2001 the Voelkels moved to rural Vermont and beganwork on Middleworld, a collaborative book based on his childhoodmemories. Together, he and his wife, Pamela, publish under thename J&P Voelkel.Pamela Craik Voelkel grew up in the northof England and, after graduating from LeedsUniversity, went to London where, afterstints reviewing books, writing catalogs, andpenning speech bubbles for photo-romances,she became an advertising copywriter. Ascreative director of Craik Jones WatsonMitchell Voelkel, she helped the agency win numerous creativeawards. After moving to Vermont in 2001, she and her husbandcollaborated on Middleworld, the first of their Jaguar Stones trilogy.Jesmyn Ward grew up in Delisle,Mississippi, the setting for her first twonovels, Where the Line Bleeds and theforthcoming Salvage the Bone. She holdsan MFA from the University of Michiganand bachelor’s and master’s degrees fromStanford University, where she was awardeda Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program. Ward isthe 2010–2011 John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence atthe University of Mississippi.Curtis Wilkie is a journalist and the authorof three books, most recently, The Fallof the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruinof America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer.He was a reporter for the Clarksdale PressRegister in his home state of Mississippiduring the 1960s and then served as anational and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe for 26years. Wilkie teaches journalism and is a fellow at the OverbyCenter for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University ofMississippi.Charles Reagan Wilson is Kelly GeneCook Sr. Chair of History and Professorof Southern Studies at the University ofMississippi. He is the author of Baptizedin Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause,1865–1920, editor of Religion in the South,coeditor of the Encyclopedia of SouthernCulture, and editor of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.His other publications include two collections of essays, Judgmentand Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis and theforthcoming Flashes of a Southern Spirit: Meanings of Spirit inthe U.S. South.Paul Yamazaki is head buyer at SanFrancisco’s landmark independent bookstoreCity Lights. He began his career therepacking books in 1970 and celebrated his40th year in 2010, when the store receivedPublishers Weekly’s “bookseller of the year”award. Yamazaki attributes his longevity tothe “amazing environment” created by poet and artist LawrenceFerlinghetti, who founded the store in 1953, and Nancy J.Peters, author, editor, and co-owner of City Lights since 1984.Stacey LewisWright Thompson, a senior writer forESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine,covers topics ranging from baseball tobullfighting. In 2010 he set a record byappearing for the fifth consecutive year inthe annual Best American Sports Writingwith “Shadow Boxing,” about the fate ofJim Robinson, who fought Muhammad Ali in Miami in 1961.Thompson’s latest honor is a Media Eclipse Award for “TheLegend of Zanyatta,” the super mare who was just retired after anepic career with 19 victories in 20 races.

City Lights BooksStacey LewisLawrence Ferlinghetti,founder/owner of City Lights“Although it has been more than 50years,” states its Web site, “since tourbuses with passengers eager to sight‘beatniks’ began pulling up in frontof City Lights, the Beats’ legacy ofantiauthoritarian politics and insurgentthinking continues to be a stronginfluence in the store, most evident inthe selection of titles.” For many yearsthis selection of titles has been theresponsibility of Paul Yamazaki, whohas been a City Lights employee formore than 40 years. Yamazaki is one ofthe most highly regarded buyers in thebook industry, known especially for hisbroad acquaintance with, and passionfor, small press colophons and their books.Only a few years after opening the store, Peter Martin returnedto New York and Lawrence Ferlinghetti bought out his share for 1,000. In 1971 Ferlinghetti hired Nancy Peters away from herjob at the Library of Congress, and over the course of her longassociation with the business, Peters eventually became an ownerand director of publishing. She shares a place with Yamazaki on thefour-member City Lights Foundation board of directors. The storehas maintained its open-minded, subversive, anarchic qualities.(Oneof its poets, Gregory Corso, once crashed through the plate glasswindow in order to take bills from the till and was forgiven by thesympathetic owner, Ferlinghetti, who kindly suggested that Corsoleave the country for a while, which he did.) Ferlinghetti, who is92 on March 24, Peters, Yamazaki, store manager Andy Bel

Adam and Eve, King James Bible, 1611 Courtesy Oxford University Press The Eighteenth Oxford Conference for the Book The University of Mississippi Oxford, Mississippi March 24–26, 2011. This year, the King James Bible marks its 400th birthday with a worldw