Sign up to win prizes and for exclusive updates about this year’s festival
April 24-26, 2026
If you are a fan of the FSU Seminoles or a resident of Florida, you know – or should know – about the writings of Tallahassee’s own Diane Roberts. Her book, Tribal, a comic, critical analysis of a Southern intellectual’s love of FSU football and distaste for the excesses that go with it, made several […]
Chuck Reece and his wife Stacy are the founders of the online magazine Salvation South, andbelieve that every Southerner sees their home region differently. Their stories are as unique asthe South’s people, and Salvation South wants to give every Southerner who has a knack fortelling a good story a place to tell theirs. Salvation South […]
Novelist Tom Robbins once said, “Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.” These words are the artistic ethos of Robbins fan and acclaimed Los Angeles-based rapper Michael Eagle II, better known as Open Mike Eagle. Like a good comedian, he couches uncomfortable truths in hilarious punchlines. Like the greatest comedians, […]
Tom Piazza is celebrated both as a novelist and as a writer on American music. His twelve books include the novels A Free State and City Of Refuge, the short-story collection Blues and Trouble, the post-Katrina manifesto Why New Orleans Matters, and Devil Sent The Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America, a collection of […]
Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, and podcaster based in Mobile, Alabama. His 2018 debut, Cotton Fields and Blood For Days, earned him rave reviews, with Tony Paris saying in The Bitter Southerner: “He plays guitar the same way he writes lyrics, bashing the strings with abandon until they are just about […]
Legendary Longineu Parsons is a classically trained trumpeter who plays in a wide variety of styles including jazz, blues, jazz fusion and classical. He is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Florida A&M University (FAMU) and heads small independent label Tribal Records. Parsons played for Nat Adderley, Cab Calloway, Doc Severinsen, Herbie Mann, Archie […]
Iheoma Nwachukwu is a Nigerian writer. Nwachukwu played professional chess for ten years. He has won fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers, and the Chinua Achebe Center for Writers. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, Electric Literature, and Prism International. He’s at work […]
North Mississippi Allstars is an American southern rock blues band founded in 1996. The band is composed of two brothers, Luther Dickinson and Cody Dickinson. The Allstars’ first release, Shake Hands with Shorty, was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Contemporary Blues Album”. Since then, 51 Phantom and Electric Blue Watermelon have received nominations […]
Kristina Neihouse moved from Portland Maine to Key West in 1995. She won The Studios of Key West 2014 Writes of Spring competition and placed 2nd in the 2018 Tennessee Williams Short Story Contest. In 2017 she was awarded an Anne McKee Artist Fund Grant to publish her first novel Knowing When to Leave. In […]
Allison Moorer is a writer in every sense of the word. Since her debut in 1998, she’s released nine albums and had five singles reach the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and her songs have appeared in movies ranging from “The Rookie” to “Moonshiners” to “The Horse Whisperer.” She and her sister, Shelby Lynn, released […]