The Tennessee Williams Tribute and Tour of Victorian Homes in Columbus, Ms., from September 6 to 12, 2010, celebrates the playwright with scholarly panels, plays, tours and receptions. This is one of many events scheduled each year across the Southern Literary Trail.

The Southern Literary Trail is a collaboration of eighteen southern towns from Natchez to Savannah that celebrate internationally renowned writers and playwrights of the twentieth century who were inspired by their communities. Check their website frequently for an updated schedule of events.

The 5th annual Carolina Mountains Literary Festival

September 10-11, 2010

For the 5th year, the small town of Burnsville, North Carolina opens its doors to more than thirty authors and hundreds of book lovers during the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. The festival’s theme “Coming Home” guides the selection of participating authors. 

Programming includes a seventeen-county community book-read featuring the novels of Tony Earley (right). The event also includes scholar-led panel discussions, author readings, storytelling, how-to sessions on oral history, and special presentations designed for high school students as well as those interested in regional culture and the connections between literature and business.

Find a complete event schedule, list of participating authors, and registration information by visiting the website.

This event is supported by the North Carolina Humanities Council.

The 30th anniversary of John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, will be celebrated at Loyola University New Orleans during Wolfpack Welcome Aug. 23-27, the week of orientation for new students.

Loyola’s ties to the novel go back to the days when it was an unpublished work. While teaching in the English department at Loyola in 1976, noted Southern author Walker Percy was approached by the mother of a young, local writer who had committed suicide seven years earlier. The mother explained to Percy that in his career, her son had failed to find a publisher for his manuscript. After some persuasion, Percy read and saw promise in the piece and later used his influence to reintroduce it to publishers. As a result, A Confederacy of Dunces was published in 1980 and Toole was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1981. The novel also won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in ’81, alongside Percy’s novel, The Second Coming. (more…)

Kentucky Women’s Writers Conference

Lexington, Kentucky

The $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award is given annually to honor a book of poetry by a midcareer U.S. poet. The winner will spend one week in residence at Claremont Graduate University in California.

The $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award is given annually to honor a first book of poetry by “a poet of genuine promise.”

Submit eight copies of a book of poetry published between September 15, 2009, and September 15, 2010, with a list of previously published work by September 15.

There is no entry fee. Visit the website for more information.