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April 4-6, 2025

Word of South

Peter and the Wolf

Revel in the classic story and music of Peter and the Wolf by composer Sergei Prokofiev set to a new ballet featuring dancers from the South Georgia Ballet with choreography by Sydney Ellen Rawlings. Musicians of the award-winning Fountain Five Woodwind Quintet will perform the music and be joined by narrator Karl Barton in this program […]

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Pat MacEnulty

Pat MacEnulty is the author of a historical novel series, crime novels, memoirs, a short story collection, children’s plays, and most recently, the historical coming-of-age novel, Cinnamon Girl (Livingston Press, Sept. 2023). She has a Ph.D. in English from the Florida State University and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Florida, where she studied […]

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Nathaniel Rich

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth, a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award and the winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. His most recent book, Second Nature, longlisted for the PEN/E.O Wilson, features the story “Dark Waters,” which was adapted into a film starring Mark […]

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Michael Bakan

Michael Bakan is Professor of Ethnomusicology, Head of the World Music Ensembles Program, and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Studies in the College of Music at Florida State University, where he directs the Sekaa Gong Hanuman Agung Balinese Gamelan. He has performed with everyone from George Clinton and the legendary funk band Parliament to John Cage, […]

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Leyla McCalla

Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present, whether it is her Haitian heritage or her adopted home of New Orleans, she — a bilingual multi-instrumentalist, and alumna of the Grammy award-winning African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops — has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots […]

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Leon Timbo

Some write music as a creative release. Others feel compelled to perform. For country-soul singer-songwriter Leon Timbo, music is used as a form of growth and healing. Growing up the son of two pastors in Jacksonville, Florida, music was integrated into his life from the very start, as a way to communicate spiritual experience. At […]

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Leon Majcen

Leon Majcen is a musician whose story is one of resilience and determination. He grew up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, the son of Bosnian war refugees who had fled their homeland in search of a better life for their children. From a young age, Leon was drawn to the power of storytelling through […]

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Kyle Kimbrell

From the swinging front-porch blues sound of “Toothache” to the Gram Parsons cosmic country realm of “Lockjaw Fever,” Kyle Kimbrell delivers a musical message for the nervous, glass-half-empty folks with enough room for a hopeful change in perspective. Despite the storms, hypochondria, and paranoid sense of simple things going wrong, Kimbrell still tells us we’ll […]

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Kerry James Evans

Kerry James Evans is the author of Bangalore (Copper Canyon). The recipient of a 2015 NEA Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared in Agni, Narrative, New England Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals. He lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where he teaches in the MFA program at Georgia College & State University and serves as the poetry […]

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Kelsey Barnard Clark

Kelsey Barnard Clark is a born and raised Gulf Southerner from Dothan, Alabama. She has developed an impressive resume, including being the fifth woman and first southerner to win the title of Top Chef, and was also voted fan favorite following her season 16 win. Kelsey got her start in the food industry working for […]

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