Former Keynote Speakers
Rita Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993–1995. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama—the only poet ever to receive both. Besides 29 honorary degrees, among them from Harvard and Yale, her honors include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ 2021 Gold Medal in poetry, a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Bobbitt Prize for lifetime achievement from the Library of Congress, the 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and a 2024 Leadership Award from the American Academy of Poets. Among her numerous books are Thomas and Beulah, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, Sonata Mulattica, Collected Poems 1974-2004, and most recently Playlist for the Apocalypse. Her play The Darker Face of the Earth was staged at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the National Theatre in London, and her song cycles with composers John Williams, Tania Leon, Richard Danielpour and others were performed at Tanglewood, Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington. Rita Dove teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.
Daniel Wallace is author of six novels, including Big Fish (1998), Ray in Reverse (2000), The Watermelon King (2003), Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician (2007), The Kings and Queens of Roam (2013), and most recently Extraordinary Adventures (May 2017). His children’s book, published in 2014, and for which he did both the words and the pictures, is called The Cat’s Pajamas. In 2003 Big Fish was adapted and released as a movie and then in 2013 the book and the movie were mish-mashed together and became a Broadway musical. His novels have been translated into over three-dozen languages. He is also the author of a coloring book, Roadside Attractions, co-authored by his esteemed friend Emily Wallace. A memoir, This Isn’t Going to End Well, was published in April, 2023.
Maurice Manning (April 2022) has published seven books of poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. A former Guggenheim fellow, Manning lives with his family in Kentucky. He teaches at Transylvania University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Linda Parsons (April 2021) coordinates WordStream, WDVX-FM’s weekly reading series, with Stellasue Lee and is the reviews editor at Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. She has contributed poetry to The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Baltimore Review, Shenandoah, and Ted Kooser’s syndicated column, “American Life in Poetry,” among many others. Parsons is the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee, and writes social justice plays for the Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. Candescent is her fifth poetry collection (Iris Press, 2019).
Silas House (April 2019) is the nationally bestselling author of six novels--Clay's Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; and Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012, and Southernmost (June 2018)--as well as a book of creative nonfiction--Something's Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and three plays: The Hurting Part (2005), This Is My Heart for You (2012), and In These Fields, with Sam Gleaves, 2016.
Joy Harjo (April 2018) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards. These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009 and is Harjo’s most recent publication.
Charles Wright (October 2017), a native East Tennessean, served as the Poet Laureate of the United States form 2014 to 2015. With a rich and full career as a writer, his collection Country Music: Selected Early Poems earned the National Book Award in 1983, and his Black Zodiac (1998) won the Pullitzer Prize. A former Fulbright Scholar, Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Ishion Hutchinson (April 2017) published two poetry collections, Far District and House of Lords and Commons, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, Hutchinson moved to the U.S. in 2006 for graduate studies. He's the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, a Lannan Writing Residency, and the Larry Levis Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Ilya Kaminsky describes him as "without a doubt one of the most gifted poets of my generation." He lives in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University.
Lisa Alther (April 2016) is the author of six novels--Kinflicks, Original Sins, Other Women, Bedrock, Five Minutes in Heaven, and Washed in the Blood. She has also written a memoir (Kinfolks), a novella (Birdman and the Dancer), a collection of short stories (Stormy Weather and Other Stories) and a narrative history of the Hatfield-McCoy feud (Blood Feud). These books have been published in seventeen languages and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. Alther was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1944. She currently lives in Tennessee, Vermont, and New York City.