Posted on March 17, 2004 at 9:55 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) English Department and the Honors Program will host the 2004 Southern Literary Festival, April 1-3, at the Spencer Honors House, 1190 10th Avenue South. The event is open to the public. Guest speakers will include award-winning poets James Applewhite and Jim Mersmann, novelists Vicki Covington and Brad Watson and UAB theatre professor Marc Powers.

The Southern Literary Festival, established in 1937, features readings and writing workshops by distinguished Southern writers in several literary genres, and it honors prize-winning student writers from its member colleges and universities in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, among others.

The conference will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 1, with readings by students participating in the festival.

Activities will continue at 9 a.m. Friday, April 2, with Mersmann, a former UAB professor of English, reading from his latest book of poetry, Straying Toward Home. At 9:30 a.m., Powers, the UAB theatre department chairman, will present a performance and discussion of a one-act play featuring UAB theatre students.

From 1 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., Covington will conduct an informal essay workshop and then give a reading from her own work. Covington, a Birmingham native, is the author of four novels, including Gathering Home. She teaches creative writing and literature at UAB.

Applewhite will lead a poetry workshop 4-5:30 p.m., following which, at 7:30 p.m., he will present the Festival’s keynote address, a reading of his own poetry. Applewhite is a professor of literature and creative writing at Duke University and the author of seven books, including River Writing: An Eno Journal and Quartet for Three Voices.

The conference will conclude on Saturday, April 3, 9:30 a.m. to noon, with Watson presenting a fiction workshop followed by a reading from his own work. Watson, a resident of Foley, Alabama, is author of The Heaven of Mercury (2003), a National Book Award finalist, and a collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, (2002). He was a visiting professor in the UAB Department of English this past fall.

For more details about the 2004 Southern Literary Festival, contact the Department of English at (205) 934-4250 or visit the Department of English Web site at www.uab.edu/english and go to the 2003-2004 Events Calendar.