Write On, Mississippi: Season 4, Chapter 17: Out in Focus

Scholarly research, poignant memoir, and portraits of life follow the threads of gay culture in the American South, for enlightening takes on celebrated literature, drag clubs, and personal and family experiences.

Panelists:

Storytelling is the heart and soul of Elizabeth McCain's life. Originally from Mississippi, she is the author of a compelling memoir, A Lesbian Belle Tells OUTrageous Southern Stories of Family, Loss, and Love, an expansion of her award-winning one-woman play. Elizabeth's true tales are about her Mississippi roots, coming out in Washington, DC as a lipstick lesbian, experiencing family rejection, and finding love and belonging. Her stories take readers and audiences on a wild ride through a Southern Belle's life of soul-searching, rule breaking, and truth telling. Elizabeth's mission is to inspire people to share their own stories for personal growth, transformation, and community building. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her spouse, Marie, and their two spoiled dogs. Elizabeth will perform her play in October in Provincetown, MA, for Women's Week. She will also be performing and doing book readings throughout the South soon. www.elizabethmccain.com.

John F. Marszalek III is the author of "Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi" (2020, University Press of Mississippi), named the 2020 Digital Book World Best Nonfiction Book and Best Book Published by a University Press. He is also a host of the podcast Queer Voices of the South on the New Books Network.

Before moving back to Mississippi, John lived in Buffalo, NY, Washington, DC, Fort Lauderdale, FL, and New Orleans, LA. John lives with his husband in Starkville, Mississippi.

M Shelly Conner is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas. She and her wife live on their central Arkansas homestead with their dog Whiskey where she writes about DIY, black queer womanhood, self-sustainable living and their interesting intersections. Her debut novel everyman (Blackstone Publishing) is available for pre-order from all retailers and will be released July 20, 2021.

Martin Padgett has an MFA from the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and received a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellowship. He has written for Oxford American, Gravy, Details, and Business Week. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Phillip "Pip" Gordon was born in Memphis and grew up in West Tennessee. He graduated in 2005 from the University of Tennessee at Martin and holds an MA and PhD from the University of Mississippi where he was awarded the Francis Bell McCool Fellowship for Faulkner Studies. His most recent projects include an essay on the how the 1918 Influenza pandemic influenced Faulkner's writing in the Fall 2020 issue of the Mississippi Quarterly and forthcoming essay on trans studies approaches to Faulkner's works in the Faulkner Journal. 

He currently lives in Platteville, Wisconsin, where he is an Associate Professor of English and Gay Studies Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. 

Moderator:

Jaime Harker is professor of English and the director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, where she teaches American literature, LGBTQ literature, and gender studies. She is the author of America the Middlebrow: Women's Novels, Progressivism, and Middlebrow Authorship Between the Wars, Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America, The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon. She is also the founder of Violet Valley Bookstore, a queer feminist bookstore in Water Valley, Mississippi.

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