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April 24-26, 2026
Terry Ann Thaxton, fifth generation Floridian, is the author of three collections of poetry: Getaway Girl (Salt, 2011), The Terrible Wife (Salt, 2013) which won the Florida Book Award Bronze Medal in 2014, and Mud Song (Truman State University Press). She has also published Creative Writing in the Community: A Guide (Bloomsbury, 2014) which is […]
Since his Carnegie Hall debut with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops, Byron Stripling has become a pops orchestra favorite, soloing with the Boston Pops, the National Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cincinnati Pops, the Seattle Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Toronto […]
The Tallahassee Symphony Jazz Orchestra is pleased to join forces with trumpeter Byron Stripling for an afternoon of “Gospel, Blues, and All that Jazz” at this year’s Word of South Festival! The set list includes Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Hoochie Coochie Man, Saint Louis Blues, Go Tell It On The Mountain, He’s Got The Whole World […]
Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, GA, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the US to write full-time. […]
Darryl Steele is a native of Tallahassee, Florida. He is a son of The Rev. Dr. C.K. Steele Sr. Tallahassee’s most celebrated leader in Civil Rights. This talented musician and vocalist has been involved in music since his early childhood, playing and singing in church and while just a teenager he played with several bands […]
Kent Spriggs has been a civil rights lawyer for more than five decades. He specialized in large class actions seeking to vindicate employment rights of blacks and women. He authored the critically acclaimed two-volume Representing Plaintiffs in Title VII Actions (2d Edition Panel Publications 1998), and most recently edited Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections […]
Katy Simpson Smith is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and the novels The Story of Land and Sea and Free Men. Her writing has also appeared in The Oxford American, Granta, Literary Hub, Garden & Gun, Catapult, and Lenny. Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, she […]
Elizabeth Sims learned the art of fiction by listening to tall tales on her father’s knee, and by reading all sorts of books brought home by her mother, a teacher. (These ranged from Grimm’s Fairy Tales to the Canterbury Tales, from Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ernest Hemingway.) She started life in Wyandotte, Michigan, and has […]
Bob Shacochis is one of America’s most provocative and accomplished writers. His story collection Easy in the Islands won the National Book Award, and his novel Swimming in the Volcano was a National Book Award finalist. His most recent novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, was the winner of the Dayton International Literary Peace […]
Tony Schwalm is a retired lieutenant colonel with the US Army Special Forces (aka the Green Berets). A veteran of multiple combat deployments around the world, he is currently assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan as a Department of the Army Civilian leading a group of social scientists supporting special operation forces […]