Mississippians will have an opportunity to hold their heads high at the upcoming Mississippi Book Festival. Two Pulitzer Prize winners are slated to participate Aug. 20, and it will get national attention through live C-SPAN coverage of author panel discussions.
Jackson native Richard Ford, who won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1995 and was a finalist in 2015, will be there.
So, too, will be Jon Meacham, a writer and former Newsweek editor who won a Pulitzer in 2009 for a biography of Andrew Jackson.
Also on the ticket, along with more than 100 other authors, is Richard Grant, a witty Englishman popular in the Delta for his book “Dispatches from Pluto” about moving to rural Holmes County and trying to understand the culture in the region.
The festival will be held at the state Capitol as well as historic Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church.
A group of the sort of artsy folks who do such things started the book festival, and last year’s inaugural event drew 3,700 people to the lawn of the Capitol. Not close to college football territory, or even high school in some communities, but it’s a solid start and it’s good to see people coming together for an intellectual pursuit.
But don’t let that intimidate you; there also will be sessions on “Comics and Cartoons” and “Sports and Outdoors” for those who are not inclined to read the sort of modern novel that usually wins the most critical acclaim and awards.
