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April 23-25, 2027

Word of South

Lisa Loeb

Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb started her career with the platinum-selling Number 1 hit song “Stay (I Missed You)” from the film Reality Bites. Loeb has successfully parlayed her talents into a multi-dimensional career encompassing music, film, television, voice-over work and children’s recordings. Today, Loeb continues to grow as an artist and to push herself and her career forward with […]

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David Leavitt

David Leavitt’s published fiction includes the short-story collections Family Dancing (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award), A Place I’ve Never Been, Arkansas and The Marble Quilt, as well as the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, Equal Affections, While England Sleeps (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize), The Page Turner, Martin Bauman, The Body of Jonah Boyd and The Indian Clerk (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the […]

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David Kirby

David Kirby is a poet, critic, and scholar. Influenced by artists as diverse as John Keats and Little Richard, Kirby writes distinctive long-lined narrative poems that braid together high and popular culture, personal memory, philosophy, and humor. “One thing that I want to do in the poems is to portray the mind as it actually […]

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James Kimbrell

James Kimbrell’s poems have appeared in anthologies including the Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of a Florida Arts Council fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, his most recent collection is The Law of Truly Large Numbers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025). He is […]

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Harrison Scott Key

Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man, winner of the 2016 Thurber Prize in American Humor. His nonfiction and humor have appeared in The New York Times, Outside, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Best American Travel Writing, Southern Living, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, and Oxford American, where he serves as a contributing editor. He teaches writing at the Savannah College […]

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Darius Jones

Darius Jones is an extraordinarily gifted alto saxophonist and composer. He joined the New York music community in 2005, after living and studying in Richmond, VA. During his time in New York he has amazed and inspired musicians and audiences from widely divergent backgrounds with his meticulously honed musical gifts. Soul-power is at his foundation; […]

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Joshilyn Jackson

New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson is the author of seven novels and a novella: The Opposite of Everyone, Someone Else’s Love Story, Gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Backseat Saints, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, and the novella My Own Miraculous. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages, won SIBA’s novel of the year, and three times been a #1 […]

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Tameka Bradley Hobbs

Tameka Bradley Hobbs is an Assistant Professor of History, Interim Chair of the Department of Social Sciences, and University Historian for Florida Memorial University, the only Historically Black University in South Florida. She earned her undergraduate degree from Florida A&M University, and her doctoral degree in United States History, and Historical Administration and Public History […]

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Adam Haslett

Adam Haslett is the author of three works of fiction: the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, which was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist; the novel Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize; and his most recent, the novel Imagine Me Gone, which was longlisted for […]

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