Authors Josh Clark and Judy Long to discuss in Oxford and Jackson, November 3 & 4
For more than two decades, writers and scholars Josh Clark and Judy Long have pondered the question: Why has Mississippi produced so much acclaimed literature? Their new book, The Most Powerful Word, attempts to answer that question.
Clark and Long interviewed Donna Tartt, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah, Ellen Gilchrist, Larry Brown, Elizabeth Spencer, Ellen Douglas, Julia Reed, Al Young, Ralph Eubanks, Dean Faulkner Wells, Jim Dees, and dozens of other Mississippi writers about that very question.
The authors orchestrated these never-before-published interviews with many of the state’s most acclaimed authors — some living, many long gone — in a conversation revealing the secrets to becoming a great writer and digging into the roots of Mississippi’s singular literary DNA: how it formed and why it still matters. Their voices move from one theme to the next, from history to geography to storytelling to booze to race, touching on eras marked by the sorrow of segregation and the upheaval of integration.
The result is a book rife with humor, horror, and hope. This symphony of narratives captures Mississippi’s influence on world literature, showing how this complex and contradictory land has shaped the soul of storytelling like no other region its size in human history. Also woven throughout this tapestry are lesser-known-excerpts from the state’s literature, archival material, historical accounts, and revealing statistics.
Mississippi’s literary heritage is more relevant today, with our continued racial reckoning, than ever. The Most Powerful Word is a journey to understand not only how great writing is born, but how art, and so civilization, can evolve.
Josh Clark and Judy Long will be in conversation at Off Square Books in Oxford on Monday, November 3 at 5:30 p.m. and at Lemuria Books in Jackson on Tuesday, November 4, at 5 p.m.
For more information, contact Square Books or Lemuria Books, or email info@nautiluspublishing.com.
About the Author
