LOUISIANA BOOK FESTIVAL TO HOST GRIT LIT PANEL
The Louisiana Book Festival will feature a panel discussion on Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader Nov. 2 at its 10th annual celebration of readers, writers and their books.
Grit Lit is a collection of memoir, fiction and other stories by acclaimed writers not about the romanticized, nostalgic South, but rather the rough, dirty side of the region and its people. The anthology serves to further elevate the Rough South as a legitimate genre of study.
Grit Lit captures the spirit of Southerners, their stories — whether traditional tall tales or true accounts of failure and survival — and a sense of both honesty and bravery. It features the work of such revered Southern writers as the late Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, Lewis Nordan and William Gay as well as contemporary writers Dorothy Allison, Ron Rash, Lee Smith and George Singleton.
The panel will include Grit Lit editors Brian Carpenter and Tom Franklin and contributors Rick Bragg and Tim Gautreaux.
The Louisiana Book Festival is 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2 in downtown Baton Rouge. It is free and open to the public.
The Louisiana Book Festival is co-sponsored by the Office of Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne; the Louisiana Center for the Book; the Louisiana Library Foundation; the State Library of Louisiana; and the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.
MEET THE PANELISTS
Brian Carpenter
EDITOR
Brian Carpenter is a freelance writer and coeditor of the anthology Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader. A Tennessee native, he graduated from Centre College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His articles on the South have appeared in various books and journals, including Southern Cultures, The Southern Review and the anthology Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing.
Tom Franklin
EDITOR
Tom Franklin is the award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which was nominated for nine awards and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include the Edgar-winning story, Poachers, from the collection under the same title, as well as Hell at the Breech and Smonk. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.
Rick Bragg
CONTRIBUTOR
Rick Bragg is the bestselling author of All Over but the Shoutin', Somebody Told Me, Ava's Man, and I Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, The Prince of Frogtown and The Most They Ever Had. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 and was the recipient of the 2013 Alabama Artist of the Year Award. He lives in Tuscaloosa where he teaches journalism at the University of Alabama.
Tim Gautreaux
CONTRIBUTOR
Recipient of the 2009 Louisiana Writer Award, Tim Gautreaux authored three novels and two collections of stories. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Harper's Magazine and Zoetrope as well as in volumes of the O. Henry and the Best American Short Story annuals. Gautreaux is professor emeritus in the creative writing program at Southeastern Louisiana University. He lives with his family in Hammond, La.
