Welcome to the Mississippi Writers Page Newsletter for January 30-February 5, 2004

In this issue:

• This week in Mississippi Literary History
• Author events: readings, book signings, and appearances
• On the horizon: events coming up in the weeks and months ahead

The following events all happened during this week in Mississippi history.

Year:
1907: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hodding Carter was born in Hammond, Louisiana. (Feb. 3)

1909: Biology professor Joseph J. Schwab was born in Columbus, Mississippi. (Feb. 2)

1910: Sociologist Romeo Benjamin Garrett was born in Natchez, Mississippi. (Feb. 2)

1915: Sociologist Abbott Lamoyne Ferriss was born in Jonestown, Mississippi. (Jan. 31)

1929: The novel Sartoris, by William Faulkner, was published by Harcourt Brace. It was the first of many novels Faulkner set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. (Jan. 31)

1932: William Faulkner published “Once Aboard the Lugger” in the Saturday Evening Post. (Feb. 1)

1933: William Faulkner began taking flying lessons. (Feb. 2)

1937: Baptist theologian Walter B. Shurden was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. (Feb. 1)

1940: Poet Sterling D. Plumpp was born in Clinton, Mississippi. (Jan. 30)

1940: Mammy Caroline (Callie) Barr died and William Faulkner delivered the eulogy at her funeral. (Jan. 31)

1941: Richard Wright, age 32, author of Native Son, won the Joel Springarn Medal awarded by the NAACP for the highest achievement “in any honorable field of endeavor.” (Jan. 31)

1948: Political scientist Charles Lipson was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. (Feb. 1)

1948: Historian Charles Reagan Wilson was born in Nashville, Tennessee. (Feb. 2)

1948: William Ferris, anthropologist, folklorist, and founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. (Feb. 5)

1951: Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway in New York, starring Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach. (Feb. 3)

1953: Novelist and journalist Ben Ames Williams died of a heart attack in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Feb. 4)

1958: William Faulkner returned to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville for another semester as writer-in-residence. (Jan. 30)

1959: William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun opened in New York at the John Golden Theatre. (Jan. 30)

1977: Memoirist Malcolm Franklin died. He was buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi, alongside his mother, Estelle Faulkner, and step-father, William Faulkner. (Jan. 30)

1979: Educator and children’s book writer Charlemae Hill Rollins died. (Feb. 3)

1992: Writer and rancher Con Sellers, who wrote more than 100 novels under the pseudonyms “Robert Crane” and “Lee Raintree,” as well as others, died in Medford, Oregon, from complications resulting from an intestinal aneurysm. (Feb. 2)

1994: A jury in Hinds County, Mississippi, convicted white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. This was de la Beckwith’s third trial; the first two in the 1960s ended in hung juries. (Feb. 5)

2002: Publication of The Summons, a novel by John Grisham. (Feb. 5)