Kristen is the author of the New York Times-bestselling novel Mostly Dead Things and the award-winning collection Felt in the Jaw. A queer writer based in Florida, she has written for The New York Times, Guernica, McSweeney's, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a winner of the Ninth Letter Literary Award in Fiction and the Coil Book Award.

Jim Barksdale is chairman of the board and president of Barksdale Management Corporation, a private company managing his investments and philanthropic activities. He also serves as chairman of Spread Networks, which he helped establish in 2009.

With over 35 years of operational experience, Jim served as president and CEO of Netscape Communications Corp. from 1995 until its merger with America Online in 1999. Prior to Netscape, he was CEO of AT&T Wireless Services and held executive positions at Federal Express Corporation and IBM. Under his leadership, Netscape received "Entrepreneurial Company of the Year" awards from both Stanford and Harvard Business School alumni groups in 1997. Computer Reseller News named him "#1 Executive of the Year," and PC Magazine selected him "Person of the Year."

**Hurricane Katrina Leadership:** Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Jim was appointed by Governor Haley Barbour to chair the Governor's Commission on the Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal of Mississippi, leading the state's comprehensive disaster recovery efforts. He subsequently chaired the Mississippi Broadband Connect Coalition and served as interim Executive Director of the Mississippi Development Authority.

Jim's philanthropic work includes establishing the Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi and investing $100 million with his late wife Sally to create The Barksdale Reading Institute for Mississippi children. In 2008, he and his wife Donna created the Mississippi Principal Corps to transform principal training in the state.

He sits on boards including Time Warner, Federal Express, and Mayo Clinic, and was appointed to President George W. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Jim holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Mississippi and has received honorary degrees from Rhodes College, Millsaps College, and Duke University.

Kai is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian who has published biographies of John J. McCloy, McGeorge Bundy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Ames-and now The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. He has also authored a memoir about his childhood in the Middle East. He is the Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His next book is a biography of Roy Cohn. His biography of Oppenheimer, American Prometheus, co-authored with the late Martin J. Sherwin, is the inspiration for Christopher Nolan's film, Oppenheimer.

Tracy is a researcher, editor, and writer in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the editor of Conversations with Ellen Gilchrist, to be published in December by the University Press of Mississippi.

James is an accounting professor emeritus from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has held various types of teaching and administrative positions at six universities including Ole Miss. Crockett is a CPA and he has published several accounting-related articles and monographs. The University Press of Mississippi published four of his books: Operation Pretense, Hands in the Till, Power Greed Hubris and Rulers of the SEC. Nautilus published his latest book When Mississippi Schooled America in Baseball. He and his wife Dorothy live in Madison where they are active members of First Baptist Church. The Crocketts have two sons four grandchildren and a great grandson. Jim is a huge baseball fan and attempts to golf occasionally. These days his primary activities are reading and writing.

John writes and hosts the Emmy Award-winning television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network, ESPN, Disney, and Hulu. Edge also writes a restaurant column for Garden & Gun. His 2017 book The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South was named one of the best books of the year by NPR and Publishers Weekly. Edge serves the University of Mississippi as a teacher, writer-in-residence, and director of the Mississippi Lab. And he serves the University of Georgia as a mentor in their low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the artist Blair Hobbs.

Helen is the author of five books including the New York Times bestselling American Housewife and Southern Lady Code. She writes humor for Garden & Gun and The New Yorker. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City.

W. Ralph is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape (Timber Press, March 2021). A native of Mount Olive, Mississippi, he is the author of two other books: Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. His essays have been published in the Hedgehog Review, Vanity Fair, The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, and The New Yorker. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently a visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He divides his time between Oxford, Mississippi, and Washington, DC.

Beth Ann has published three poetry books: Open House, Tender Hooks, and Unmentionables, all with W. W. Norton. She is also the author of 3 books of prose: Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs; Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, a collection of essays; and The Tilted World, a novel co-authored with her husband Tom Franklin. Beth Ann's poetry has been in over fifty anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Poets of the New Century, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year.

Melissa is the author of the poetry collections Doll Apollo and Dear Weather Ghost, the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, and three poetry chapbooks, Arbor, Double Blind, and Apollo. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Image, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. Originally from Houston, Texas, Melissa studied poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi and serves as Associate Editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Tiffany is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of YA novels Monday's Not Coming, Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, White Smoke, Santa in The City, The Weight of Blood, and co-author of Blackout. A Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Award-winner and the NAACP Image Award-nominee, she received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is currently splitting her time between the borough she loves and the south, most likely multitasking.

Kiese is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. He was also the recipient of the 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard and a MacArthur Genius grant. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Rice University.

Aimee is the author of the New York Times bestselling illustrated collection of nature essays World of Wonders, chosen as Barnes & Noble's Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She has published four award-winning poetry collections and is the poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the storytelling branch of the Sierra Club. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family and is a professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Ellen, associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has been curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection since 2006. She has served on the Newbery Medal Committee, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and the Schneider Family Book Award. She also serves as an administrator of the Ezra Jack Keats Award.

Angie is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Nic Blake and the Remarkables series, The Hate U Give, On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose as well as Find Your Voice: A Guided Journal for Writing Your Truth. She is also a coauthor of the bestselling collaborative novels Blackout and Whiteout. Angie divides her time between her native Jackson, Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia. You can find her online at angiethomas.com.

Wright is the bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family.

Vince is a native of Jackson Mississippi. He attended St. Therese's Elementary School on McDowell Road in south Jackson. In 1971 he graduated from St. Joseph High School. Vince has degrees from Mississippi State University (BA), the University of Southern Mississippi (MSW) and the University of Alabama (Ph.D.) Dr. Venturini taught at Mississippi Valley State University for 28 years where he served at various times as the Chair of Social Work and as the Associate Provost of the University. He also taught post retirement at Jackson State University. Since his retirement he has been writing local histories. His first book, "One Direction Home: A History of South Jackson" (co-authored with the late Doug Shanks has to date sold nearly 1700 copies. His second book covered downtown and west Jackson. His new book is based upon the diary kept by a teenage Jackson girl during the Battle of Jackson (May 1863) and the Siege of Jackson (July 1863). Vince combines her story with local history to show the hardships young Belle endured. Currently, Vince is writing a history of Social Work in Mississippi. He works out of his home in Ridgeland.

Jerid, also known as Akili Nzuri, is a writer, educator, Ph.D. candidate, and literary influencer. He was born and raised in Natchez, MS, and survives on an unwavering commitment to igniting a passion for reading in the youth; he also exists as a living testimony to the power of shared stories and knowing oneself. He owns and creates Ablackmanreading.com and the Instagram blog: @ablackmanreading.