Schedule of Events

pre-conference events

THURSDAY APRIL 6

Driving Miss Daisy Crazy — keynote address in fiction by Lee Smith
103 Wilson Hall 8 p.m.
Ms. Smith will be introduced by Cecilia Tichi, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Vanderbilt University
Reception
Late Night Tennis with Libations and Music at the Vanderbilt Tennis Center 10 p.m.
Music by The Skylarks

FRIDAY APRIL 7

The Sound of the Fury: What Does Southern Sound Like?
Rand Function Room, Sarratt Student Center 10-11:30 a.m.

Can we talk about the sound of our own voices? And if we love it, or hate it? And what other voices we hear… Can we talk about the distinctive sound of Southern language and literature? Why it remains a feature of our writing that resists eradication, globalization, etc.? We’ll also talk about issues of form and features of form.

Padgett Powell, host
Ellen Voigt
Percival Everett
Yusef Komunyakaa
Dave Smith
Madison Smartt Bell
William Gay
Wyatt Prunty
Lee Smith
Womanless Weddings, "White Lady Writing," and Trash: Conversations on Gender and Class
Rand Function Room, Sarratt Student Center 11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.

Womanless weddings are a local custom in Vanderbilt Assistant Professor of English Tony Earley’s area of the Appalachians wherein male citizens of the region dress in drag to perform a wedding for the community, ostensibly as a fundraiser. "White lady writing" is one of Walker Percy’s charming phrases for self-conscious Southern writing by women. And we all know what trash is. In this roundtable, we’ll talk about boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and boys, good ol’ boys, big hair, the big house, and the many hyperbolic practices and performances of gender and class in Southern culture and how we deal with/represent them – or don’t – in our writing. And why so much of this has been left out of Southern literature until fairly recently.

Jill McCorkle, host
Tony Earley
Betty Adcock
Michael Chitwood
Kate Daniels
Elizabeth Dewberry
T.R. Hummer
Margaret Gibson
Readings by Emerging Writers
189 Sarratt Center 1:30-2:30 p.m.

Kevin Wilson, host
Lavonne Adams
Maudelle Driskell
Michael Griffith
Angie Hogan
Silas House
Nicola Mason
Delisa Mulkey
Jack Riggs
Megan Sexton

Choppin’ Up the Chiffarobe: Conversations on Race
Rand Function Room, Sarratt Student Center 2:45-4:30 p.m.

I guess we all remember the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Mayella Ewell pretends to call Tom Robinson into her yard to chop up an old chiffarobe…
Betsy Cox
Pam Durban
Rodney Jones
Forrest Hamer
Roy Blount Jr.
Natasha Trethewey
Lewis Nordan
Judy Jordan
You Made Me — keynote address in poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa
103 Wilson Hall 8 p.m.
Mr. Komunyakaa will be introduced by Michael Kreyling, professor of English at Vanderbilt University
Reception

SATURDAY APRIL 8

"The Church of Christ without Christ": Conversations on Faith
The Divinity School Refectory 9:30-11 a.m.
Do we still live in the Bible Belt?

David Bottoms, host
Andrew Hudgins
Scott Ely
Mark Jarman
Richard Bausch
Richard Tillinghast
Allen Wier
Susan Ludvigson
Why We Want to Go Home Again: Conversations on Place
The Divinity School Refectory 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m.

Talking about the homeplace and the diaspora, love it or leave it, New South/Old South, all about ambivalence.

John Lane, host
James Applewhite
John Holman
Kathryn Byer
Walter Sullivan
Brad Watson
Lisa Coffman
Michael Knight
Jayne Anne Phillips
Readings by Emerging Writers
The Divinity School Refectory 1-2 p.m.

Angie Hogan, host
Jeanne Braselton
Mehera Dennison
Pam Duncan
Florence Nash
Brian Teare
Kyle Thompson
Bakar Wilson
Kevin Wilson

Town Meeting: Airing the [Grave in the] House of Southern Literature, a plenary session
103 Wilson Hall 2:30-4 p.m.

Wherein we will all convene to figure out what we’ve been talking about in the roundtables and to have it recorded for posterity.

Tony Earley, emcee
Meet the Writers/Media Fair/Book Sale
Wilson Hall foyer 4-6 p.m.

Vanderbilt University Bookstore will make available copies of books by the writers participating in the Millennial Gathering. Authors will be available for signing. Representatives of the following publications and organizations will be present: The Alabama Writer's Forum; Algonquin Books; Atlanta Review; Brightleaf; Chattachoochie Review; Cumberland Poetry Review; Five Points: A Journal of Literature & Art; Georgia Review and University of Georgia Press; Louisiana State University Press; New Virginia Review; University of North Carolina Press; Oxford American; Sewanee Writers Conference and the Sewanee Writers Series; Southern Review; University of Tennessee Press; Vanderbilt Review; Vanderbilt University Press; Women's Review of Books

At 4:30 p.m., Leon Stokesbury, poet and editor of the newly published edition of The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2000), will host a signing event for the poets in attendance who are represented in anthology.

All events take place on the Vanderbilt campus and are free and open to the public. No registration is necessary.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 5 pre-conference events:

Workshop for secondary school teachers on teaching Southern literature in the new millennium.
2:30-4 p.m., Duncan Library, Benson Hall on the Vanderbilt campus.
Open free of charge to all teachers, but pre-registration is required.
For information, call Kevin Wilson, Millennial Gathering program assistant, at (615) 343-3186.
"More than a 'Fugitive' Tradition: Writers at Vanderbilt in the Twentieth Century"
7 p.m. 126 Wilson Hall on the Vanderbilt campus
A lecture by John Lowe (Vanderbilt B.A. '67), professor of literature and Southern studies, Louisiana State University. Free. Reception to follow.
Sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.

For more information on all events, e-mail kate.daniels@vanderbilt.edu or call (615) 343-3186

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Millennial Gathering homepage | Information on the keynote speakers | List of writers attending| Millennial Gathering news release
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