The 2025 Louisiana Book Festival will be held on Saturday, November 1.
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Gary Richards

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup Gary Richards

Gary Richards is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication at the University of Mary Washington. He routinely offers the courses Southern Literature, Modern American Fiction, and Contemporary American Fiction and has taught special topics courses in American humor and post-World War II American drama. He has also offered senior seminars on William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and the literature of New Orleans. He is the author of Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936-1961.

 

Schedule

1:45 pm to 2:30 pm

State Capitol, Senate Committee Room E

One Book, One Festival: The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel tells the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Along in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents.