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Home > Trailfest 2013 Events > Mississippi
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MISSISSIPPI'S TRAILFEST 2013
EVENTS
Click on a town below for Trailfest
event information in that area.
Natchez Clarksdale, Greenville and the Mississippi Delta Oxford Columbus Jackson New Albany Como
February 21-24, 2013
Annually two important awards are presented at NLCC. The Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award honors the Natchez-born writer and recognizes writers for a body of literary work. Past recipients include Trail writers Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker Alexander. The Horton Foote Award of the NLCC honors achievements in screenwriting and its recipients include Billy Bob Thornton and Robert Duvall. Place:
Copiah-Lincoln Community College and various Natchez sites
Clarksdale, Greenville and the Mississippi Delta:
Sunday, March 17 through Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Spiced by the region's distinctive food and music, literary discussions will include "William Faulkner's Delta" conducted by Phillip Gordon of the University of Mississippi. The Tour route features a stop at historic Burrus House on Hollywood Plantation in Benoit where Tennessee Williams's screenplay "Baby Doll" was filmed with Carroll Baker in 1956. Marion Barnwell will speak about Walker Percy at the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library in Greenville. Dining experiences include the famed Doe's Eat Place. Group hotel accommodations are available at Greenwood's Alluvian. Information and
Reservations: Call Tour organizer Jimmy Thomas at 662.915.3374
Daily
Place: The William
Alexander Percy Memorial Library in Greenville, Ms. at 341 Main
Street
Thursday, April 18 to Sunday, April 21, 2013 August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winning play tells the story of Troy Maxson, a former star of the Negro Baseball League, who works as a garbage man in 1957 Pittsburgh. Excluded as a black player from the major leagues, Troy harbors a bitterness that affects his relationships with his wife and son, who wants his own chance to play ball. Place: Delta Center
Stage in Greenville
Thursday, March 21, to Saturday, March 23, 2013
The opening address will be delivered on Thursday, March 21, 2013, by W. Ralph Eubanks of the Library of Congress. The evening reception (requiring advance registration) will be hosted at the Barksdale-Isom Place in Oxford. For complete information including registration, visit www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com. Place: Oxford,
Mississippi, and The University of Mississippi
Through April 6, 2013
Place: The
University of Mississippi Museum at Oxford
William Faulkner's home Rowan Oak was originally built in 1844 and stands on more than 29 acres of land just south of the Square in Oxford, Mississippi. The property is owned and operated by The University of Mississippi and provides the public a look into the life of one of America's most beloved writers. Place: Rowan Oak in
Oxford, Ms.
American playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911, and spent his early years in an old Victorian home that was a rectory for St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Williams's grandfather, Reverend Walter Dakin, served as the minister for the church. The playwright's first home is now a restored literary landmark that serves as the Welcome Center for the birthplace of the creator of "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire." Place: The Tennessee
Williams Home and Welcome Center at 300 Main Street, Columbus, Ms.
March 31 through April 13, 2013 The Columbus Spring Pilgrimage is an award winning event that has earned its reputation as one of the most authentic home tours in the South. For thirteen days in the early spring, carriage rides and double decker buses transport visitors to the ante-bellum and Victorian Era South. Tours may also be self-guided, beginning at the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center. A complete brochure for the Pilgrimage is available at www.columbus-ms.org. Place: The Spring
Pilgrimage of Columbus, Mississippi
A seldom-seen play by Tennessee Williams will be presented in Columbus as a showcase feature of the city's annual pilgrimage of homes. "Kingdom of Earth" was the original title for "The Seven Descents of Myrtle." Legendary Broadway impresario David Merrick produced the first staging of the play in 1968 with Estelle Parsons, who received a Tony nomination. The play was made into the movie "Last of the Mobile Hot Shots" with Lynn Redgrave and James Coburn. It will be performed nightly during the pilgrimage in the old storefront of historic Alford Drug Store at 425 Main Street in Columbus. Place: 425 Main
Street in Columbus
Wednesday, April 3 to Friday, April 12, 2013
Place: Friendship
Cemetery in Columbus, Ms., at 4th Street South and 15th Avenue South
Tuesdays through Fridays Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, author Eudora Welty lived in the Tudor Revival style house at 1119 Pinehurst from 1925 until her death in 2001. It is the home where the author of "Delta Wedding" wrote almost all her fiction and essays. The house and its contents have been carefully preserved as Welty left them. Above all else, among the collections of paintings, photographs, objects d'art and record albums, Welty's thousands of books remain in their original places. Place: The Welty
House and Gardens at 1119 Pinehurst
Daily, Monday through Friday Open to the public, the Center was founded as the Institute for the Study of History, Life and Culture of Black People by Margaret Walker ("Jubilee") in 1968. The Center honors the writer's academic and artistic legacy through its archival collections, exhibits and public programs. The collections include her papers and a large oral history department that includes nearly 2000 interviews. Place: The Margaret
Walker Alexander Center at Ayer Hall, Jackson State University
Friday, April 12, 2013
Place: The Eudora
Welty House at 1119 Pinehurst St.
Friday and Saturday, April 12 -13, 2013 The Center's annual Creative Arts Festival at Jackson State University features student performances, panel presentations, and art displays. Poetry and the performing arts are traditional cornerstones of the Festival. This year's theme will be the Legacy of Medgar Evers, whose assassination occurred 50 years ago in 1963. Place: Jackson State
University and the Margaret Walker Alexander Center at Ayer Hall
Wednesday,
May 15, 2013 to Friday, December 13, 2013 2013 is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers, a shocking murder that stunned Eudora Welty into immediate action. She wrote the haunting "Where is this Voice Coming From?" on the night of June 12, 1963, after hearing of Evers's death. The story captures the hatred and divisive atmosphere in which the tragedy could occur. "Voice" was published in the July 6, 1963, issue of "The New Yorker" magazine. This exhibit in the Eudora Welty Education and Visitors Center adjoining the Eudora Welty House examines the event with haunting correspondences written by Welty about the tragedy. Place: The Eudora
Welty Education and Visitors Center, 1119 Pinehurst St.
Mississippi's newest member in the Southern Literary Trail, the Union County Heritage Museum in New Albany honors the town's connections to William Faulkner and Borden Deal with exhibits and a literary garden that features the plants in Faulkner's novels. The Museum and Faulkner Literary Garden are located only one block from Faulkner's birth site. New Albany is considered the town that inspired "The Hamlet" and "The Reivers." A visit to the Museum conjures visions of Yoknapatawpha County. Place: The Union
County Heritage Museum in New Albany, Ms.
Como:
Born in Como, Stark Young graduated to the ranks of the nation's most cosmopolitan and accomplished literary talents of the 20th Century. He was a poet, playwright and author whose best-selling novel "So Red the Rose" depicts with fiction the Civil War struggles of his own family. With a vast knowledge of theater, Young wrote drama criticism for "The New Republic" and became renowned for his reviews that included critical essays of Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie" and Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh." Well versed in numerous languages, Young translated acclaimed English versions of Chekhov's "The Three Sisters," "The Cherry Orchard," and "Uncle Vanya." Endless artistic talents enabled Young to paint landscapes and flowers during a latter chapter of his life. New York exhibits of the writer's artwork received enthusiastic responses from Manhattan's demanding art critics in 1945. Young died in 1963 and was buried in Como's Friendship Cemetery.
Place: The Emily J.
Pointer Public Library in Como, Mississippi
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The
Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration (NLCC) officially begins
Trailfest 2013 in Mississippi with its theme, "Fiction, Fact and
Film: The Civil War's Imprint on Southern Culture." Every year since
its inception in 1990, the NLCC builds its remarkable menu of films,
lectures, discussions, tours, concerts and book signings upon a
theme from Southern history. This year, NLCC focuses on the impact
and imprints of the Civil War. A complete agenda of NLCC events in
one of the South's most historic and picturesque cities awaits its
visitors at the Celebration's website,
Each
year literary travelers from across the nation gather for this
unique Tour to explore the Delta's writers, books, food and lore.
Organized by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford,
the tour introduces its participants to legendary blues music and
unforgettable culinary experiences. The Tour is based in Greenwood
with day trips to Southern Literary Trail cities Greenville and
Clarksdale. Other Delta stops include Indianola, Leland,
Winterville, and Benoit.
The
William Alexander Percy Memorial Library has organized a permanent
exhibit that studies and salutes the famous writers from Greenville
including Walker Percy and Shelby Foote. After tragedies took Walker
Percy's parents from him, his older cousin William ("Uncle Will")
adopted him and his brothers and gave them a home in Greenville.
William Alexander Percy wrote "Lanterns on the Levee, Recollections
of a Planter's Son."
The
Oxford Conference for the Book celebrates its 20th year in March
2013 with three days of programs designed to please every
anniversary visitor to Faulkner's hometown: readers, writers,
journalists, poets, publishers, students, teachers, food lovers and
literary enthusiasts. The guest authors include John T Edge
("Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing"), Tom
Franklin ("Hell at the Breech"), Ron Rash ("The Cove"), Curtis
Wilkie ("The Fall of the House of Zeus") and Vladimir Alexandrov
("The Black Russian").
The
University of Mississippi Museum presents a preview of major
artworks donated by noted Los Angeles art collector Gordon W.
Bailey, a staunch advocate of Southern vernacular artists. The
exhibition was organized by curator James G. Thomas, Jr., one of the
State Directors of the Southern Literary Trail and Associate
Director for Publications at the Center for the Study of Southern
Culture. Though the artists in the collection were self-taught,
Thomas urges that their "creations have a rightful place within the
canon of American art." The Southern vernacular art on display
weaves a visual literature for the Museum's visitors.
Daily
Tours, except Mondays
Daily
THE
COLUMBUS, MISSISSIPPI, SPRING PILGRIMAGE
April
1 through 13, 2013
"Tales
from the Crypt" during the Columbus Pilgrimage re-creates the lives
of noted personalities buried at historic Friendship Cemetery, site
of the Confederate Decoration Day that inspired the poem "The Blue
and The Gray." Dramatic vignettes at the Cemetery depict prominent
local citizens who contributed to the history of Columbus and
Mississippi. The event has won the Governor's Award for Excellence
in the Arts and was named a national finalist for the Save Our
History Classroom Award.
THE
EUDORA WELTY HOUSE AND GARDEN
THE
MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER
The
Eudora Welty House celebrates the writer's birthday with a plant
sale (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) that features the half-dozen heirloom
camellia varieties represented in her garden. The sale also includes
summer heirloom annuals from a Jackson nursery. The 6th grade Honor
Choir from the First Presbyterian Day School in the Bellhaven
neighborhood kicks off the birthday celebration at 10:00 a.m. with a
musical performance. Tours of the House throughout the entire day
are free and open to the public. Visitors will be treated to a slice
of cake and lemonade on the side porch of the House.
THE
7TH ANNUAL CREATIVE ARTS FESTIVAL AT JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY
PRESENTED BY THE MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER
THE MURDER OF MEDGAR EVERS AND "WHERE IS THE VOICE COMING FROM?"
Daily,
Tuesday through Saturday
Thursday,
March 28, 2013
The
Southern Literary Trail salutes Como, Mississippi, and its Emily J.
Pointer Public Library for a Tribute to Stark Young that will occur
on the grounds of the Library on Thursday, March 28, 2013, beginning
at noon. At 12:45 p.m., a Literary Landmarks marker will be
dedicated on the south lawn. The Tribute program will include "A
Visit from Stark Young" with actor Ken Wooten as Young. Karen
Wilson, executive director of the Son Edna Foundation in Charleston,
Ms., will give the keynote address about literacy in small-town
Mississippi. Other presentations include selections from "The Cherry
Orchard" in the original Russian and in Young's English translation.
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