Stellar Lineup of Authors Scheduled for Oxford Conference for the Book

Acclaimed novelist Martin Amis and short story author Ann Beattie will headline a Who’s Who list of authors appearing at this year’s Oxford Conference for the Book, to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 21-23, on the University of Mississippi campus.
One of the nation’s premier literary events, the conference, presented by UM’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Square Books, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Poets, novelists, journalists, scholars and readers will flock to Oxford and Ole Miss for the conference, which is free and open to the public.

The Oxford Conference for the Book includes readings, panel discussions and lectures by notable writers, first-time novelists and celebrated academics.
Events will take place across the Ole Miss campus and at various sites across Oxford. This year’s conference will begin with a pre-conference reading and book signing by Mississippi novelist Michael Farris Smith. His newest book, The Fighter, will launch on the evening before the conference begins, and conferees are encouraged to attend this event at Off Square Books on Tuesday, March 20.
Other featured authors at Off Square Books will include Jonathan Miles, who will read from and sign copies of his latest novel, “Anatomy of a Miracle,” on Wednesday, March 21, and Martin Amis’ appearance on Thacker Mountain Radio the next day, where he’ll read from his newest book, “The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchen, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994-2017.”
This year’s participants also include historians, sociologists and anthropologists, literary critics and cultural studies scholars, poets, essayists and memoirists, literature scholars, editors and publishers, and a wildlife biologist.
In addition to Amis and Beatty, other participating authors will include Scott Barretta, Shawn Chandler Bingham, Jenny Browne, Jaime Cantrell, Daniel Connolly, Matt de la Peña, Jim Dees, Simone Delerme, John T. Edge, Kelly Norman Ellis, John A. Farrell, Beth Ann Fennelly, Leon Fink, Lindsey A. Freeman, Jane Hill, Jonathan Kauffman, Ellen Meacham, Jonathan Miles, Ricardo Nazario y Colon, Chris Offutt, Thomas Oliphant, Julian Randall, Zandria F. Robinson, Cathy Shropshire, Michael Farris Smith, Angela Stuesse, Jennifer Tseng, Frank X. Walker, Elaine Weiss, Marcus Wicker, Shirley Wiegand, Wayne A. Wiegand, Jessica Wilkerson, and Curtis Wilkie.
Conference panels, sessions and readings will explore a wide range of topics, such as political history; the Latino experience in the South; the Bohemian South; the fight in Tennessee to ratify the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote; radical foodways; and Affrilachian poets and their legacy, among others. Authors will sign copies of their books each afternoon at Off Square Books.

Wednesday evening, March 21, brings the Book Conference Authors Party, held at the Barksdale-Isom House and cohosted this year by the Friends of the J.D. Williams Library. This much-loved opening dinner reception is a lively fundraiser with wonderful food, drinks, music and conversation between fellow conference attendees and guest writers. A portion of the $50 ticket proceeds is tax-deductible. All reservations can be made online on the conference website or by calling 662-915-3374.
The 2018 Children’s Book Festival, held in conjunction with the Oxford Conference for the Book, will be held again at the Ford Center for Performing Arts on Thursday, March 22, with more than 1,200 first- and fifth-graders from the schools of Lafayette County and Oxford in attendance. Matt De La Peña will talk to the first-graders about his book, “Last Stop on Market Street,” at 9 a.m., and he will talk to the fifth-graders about his book, “A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis” at 10:30 a.m. The Lafayette County Literacy Council sponsors the first-grade program, and the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford sponsors the fifth-grade program. All 1,200 children will receive their own copy of each book.
To learn more about the guest authors, visit the conference’s website and the conference’s Facebook page. You can register for special events on the conference website or by contacting conference director James G. Thomas, Jr. at 662-915-3374 or by e-mail at jgthomas@olemiss.edu.

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Special to HottyToddy.com