SEMO GETS GRANT FOR SOUTHERN LITERARY FESTIVAL

The Missouri Humanities Council (MHC) has awarded a $4,097 grant to Southeast Missouri State University to support the 1994 Southern Literary Festival, to be held on campus next spring.

Theme of the conference, scheduled for April 21-23, will be "Borderline North-South/Old South-New South." Events will be held in the University Center, Grauel Language Arts Building and Kent Library.

The festival, which is open to the public, is designed to enhance the audience's awareness and appreciation of the work of featured writers, whose writing has a base in regional materials. The festival also aims to emphasize the literary and historical heritage of the region.

The primary emphasis of the festival will be on presentations by four contemporary writers whose work focuses on the larger region encompassing Southeast Missouri, and reflects a cultural diversity characteristic of the region. Part of the program, which is supported by the MHC grant, will include readings and discussions by historical and autobiographical writers Clifton Taulbert and Jerry Ellis. Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason and poet James Autry also will provide readings and discussions.

The festival also will include workshops for aspiring writers, awards to student writers, a lecture on William Faulkner, an exhibit at the university's Center for Faulkner Studies, and a panel discussion.

About four weeks before the start of the festival, J. Leo Harris, professor of English at Southeast, will speak on the writing of Mason, with particular focus on one of Mason's novels, "In Country." Harris' presentation, which is being funded with support from the MHC, is intended to serve as preparation for the festival.

The grant also will fund a presentation by Benjamin Bates, Southeast instructor of English, about African-American writing; a lecture on Faulkner and southern history by Robert Hamblin, Southeast professor of English and director of the Center for Faulkner Studies; an exhibit of books, manuscripts, photographs and letters from the center's Brodsky Collection, which is one of the four major Faulkner collections in the world; and a luncheon at which Taulbert will speak about his work as a writer.

The festival will end with a panel discussion on the festival theme by Mason, Ellis and a humanities scholar to be named.

The Missouri Humanities Council is the only statewide agency in Missouri devoted exclusively to humanities education for citizens of all ages. It has served as the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1971.

Daniel Straubel, professor of English and mass communication at Southeast, is serving as project director for the Southern Literary Festival.