Contact: Beth Fox (615) 322-NEWS
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Historic gathering of writers of the New South to meet at Vanderbilt University
[Editor's note: All events are open to the media. All events, except the April 8 showcase, are open to the public. The size of the performance hall requires the limit on the concert audience.]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - In perhaps the most significant gathering of Southern writers in more than 65 years, Vanderbilt University will host a historic, large-scale gathering of prose and poetry writers April 6-8 to examine the state of Southern literature.
"A Millennial Gathering of the Writers of the New South" will feature 46 of the top names in modern Southern writing, including keynote speakers Yusef Komunyakaa and Lee Smith. The free, open colloquium will give members of the public the opportunity to discuss literary and social issues with such writers as Jill McCorkle, Richard Bausch, Padgett Powell and Madison Smartt Bell. There will also be panels, workshops, readings, book signings and other opportunities for the public to interact with the writers.
"This conference, to my knowledge, may gather in a single place and time almost everyone of importance in the new generation of Southern writers," said Dave Smith, coeditor of the Southern Review and one of the most eminent contemporary Southern writers. "I expect to see a sense of fellowship and camaraderie emerge, as well as a profitable exchange of views on our common endeavor and the culture in which we live. If previous gatherings are any guide, it might have some very substantial, international effects."
He said the Vanderbilt conference could be as far-reaching as the 1935 Louisiana State University conference that declared the emergence of the "new criticism."
The gathering will culminate Saturday night with an invitation-only showcase of musicians and authors at the Country Music Hall of Fame, featuring Marshall Chapman, Steve Earle, Clyde Edgerton, Bob McDill and Atlanta alternative bluegrass band Blueground Undergrass. Vanderbilt University and the Country Music Foundation have a long-standing relationship, including a partnership through Vanderbilt University Press to publish and distribute books focusing on the role of country music in American popular culture. "We really appreciate our relationship with Vanderbilt through VU Press," said Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Foundation. "We're excited about the Millennial Gathering bringing distinguished artists and writers from the South - songwriters, authors and poets - together in a room."
A book commemorating the Millennial Gathering will be published after the event by the University of Missouri Press. Ernest Suarez, chair of the English department at Catholic University and a scholar of Southern studies, is compiling the book.
The setting of the Millennial Gathering, at Vanderbilt, is particularly appropriate, given that Vanderbilt was the home of the Fugitive literary movement in the early 20th century and has produced many award-winning writers, according to Kate Daniels, assistant professor of English at Vanderbilt and director of the conference. Until recently, the 16 Fugitive poets and Nobel Laureate William Faulkner have provided the most visible face of Southern literature.
"There has never been such a large-scale gathering of Southern writers," Daniels said. "That such a gathering will take place at Vanderbilt University is significant, as Vanderbilt has provided a nexus of attention for much of the history and practice of 20th century Southern literature."
The Fugitive poets, most of whom had close ties to Vanderbilt, including John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren, met frequently between 1915 and 1928 to read and discuss their works. Beginning in April 1922 and ending in December 1925, they published 19 issues of The Fugitive, a magazine of verse and brief critical commentaries on the state of modern letters; many credit these poets and men of letters as the spark of the Southern Literary Renaissance.
More recently, such writers as Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer Peter Taylor, poet James Dickey, poet and critic Randall Jarrell, novelist Caroline Gordon and literary humorist Roy Blount Jr. have studied at Vanderbilt.
In the past three decades, Daniels said, the landscape of Southern literature has developed and expanded dramatically. "The face of contemporary Southern literature is very different" from the original image portrayed in the early 20th century, Daniels said. "It is many faces now - African American as well as white; women side by side with men; working class, middle class and planter class; urban and rural. 'A Millennial Gathering of the Writers of the New South' provides an opportunity for writers to celebrate our new diversity of expression and to examine some of the issues that still, after all, bind us together as Southern folk.
"As a Southern writer myself, I am incredibly pleased that Vanderbilt is making this opportunity available to Southern writers. And as a Vanderbilt faculty member, I am proud of the institution's willingness to update its own relationship with Southern literature and to mark the enormous changes that have taken place since the Fugitive poets came together on this campus eight decades ago to identify their shared goal of regional writing," Daniels said.
For a list of writers attending, a complete schedule of events and more information, visit the Millennial Gathering Web site at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/writers2000 or contact Kate Daniels at [email protected] or (615) 322-2542. More news and information about Vanderbilt can be found at www.vanderbilt.edu/News.
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