CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron this spring will address the Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature sponsored by the Arts and Education Council.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Styron’s novel, “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Sponsors said Styron is scheduled to join Willie Morrie, Ernest Gaines, Lee Smith, Clyde Edgerton and other authors for the conference, to be held April 3-5 at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga’s Tivoli Theater.
The conference coincides with the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, an organization formed to encourage and reward literary merit among established and aspiring Southern authors.
This year’s fellowship convocation will include the naming of the organization’s archives in the UTC library in honor of UTC English department head, Arlie Herron.
The Conference on Southern Literature was the inspiration of Herron, who arranged for Eudora Welty, Walker Percy and Cleanth Brooks to participate in the organization’s first conference in 1981.
Styron will speak at 10 a.m., April 5, on “Nat Turner Revisited,” an address about the controversy the novel generated 30 years ago. The novel blends fact and fiction to tell the story of a Southern slave who led a rebellion in Virginia in 1831.
—
Contact: Carolyn Mitchell at UTC (423-755-4363)