One of the oldest literary conferences in the country, the Deep South Festival of Writers is an annual event run by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  The Festival encourages innovative cultural exchange by providing panel discussions, performances, readings and craft lectures by prominent artists and writers from across the nation. 

This year’s featured writers include Mary Gaitskill, Rikki Ducornet, Chris Chambers, Erin Elizabeth Smith and Brenda Marie Osbey.   

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the Collection, Because They Wanted To, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998 and the novels, Bad Behavior (1988), Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) and Veronica (2005). Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her story Secretary was the basis for the film of the same name. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she teaches creative writing at Syracuse University. 

Rikki Ducornet is the author of seven novels including The Fan Maker's Inquisition, an L.A. Times Book of the Year, and The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award. She has illustrated books by Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges. Her lithographs, drawings and paintings have been exhibited widely, including the Museo de Bellas Artes, Mexico CIty, Museau National de Cestro Coimbra, Portugal, the Fine Arts Museums of West Berlin, Ixelles, Brno and Lille, and in the Biblioteque Nationale. The 1993 recipient of the Lannan Literary Award in Fiction, she is the writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 

Christopher Chambers worked as a carpenter, a journalist, a salesman, a bartender, a dockworker, a lifeguard, and a teacher. He taught martial arts in Minneapolis and writing in Alabama. In 1999, he received an MFA degree from the University of Alabama, where he was editor of the Black Warrior Review. He has written for television, and has published fiction, poetry, book reviews and photography. He is the editor of the New Orleans Review, an international journal of contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, photography, and film.

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the author of the book The Fear of Being Found (forthcoming from three candles press). Her poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, Crab Orchard, Natural Bridge, West Branch, The Pinch, Rhino, and Willow Springs among others. She is the managing editor of Stirring and the Best of the Net anthology as well as the president of Sundress Publications.

Brenda Marie Osbey, the Poet Laureate of Louisiana, is the author of All Saints: New and Selected Poems which received the 1998 American Book Award, Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman, In These Houses and Ceremony for Minneconjoux. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies and collections including Callaloo, Obsidian, Essence, Southern Exposure, Southern Review, Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now and Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. Her essays on New Orleans appear in The American Voice, Georgia Review, BrightLeaf and Creative Nonfiction. Her essays on Black life in contemporary France appear in the Gambit Weekly. Osbey is the recipient of other fellowships and awards, including: Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis France (2004); New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Maxi-Grant (1993); National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowship (1990); Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Poetry Award (1984). She has taught French and English at Dillard University in New Orleans, African American and Third World literatures at the University of California at Los Angeles, African American literature and creative writing at Loyola University, and was visiting writer-in-residence at Tulane University.

Festival dates:
November 1st—4th 2007

Location:
UL Lafayette Alumni House

For more information, please contact Dr. Dayana Stetco
Email: dxs7118@louisiana.edu
Phone: (337) 482-5504

The Deep South Festival of Writers was made possible by a ULS Service-Learning Grant