Dear Percy-L:Please find below the latest announcement from the Walker Percy Weekend detailing their topics and panelists for their upcoming weekend festivities. Each looks to cover new, interesting ground, including sessions looking into Percy’s friendship with Shelby Foote and noted Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles.
All best Percy wishes, Henry Mills
— Percy-L Administrator Director, The Walker Percy Project www.ibiblio.org/wpercyYOU'VE READ THE BOOKS
NOW MEET THE EXPERTSJune 1 - 3, 2018, St. Francisville, LaThe fifth annual Walker Percy Weekend brings acclaimed writers, speakers and scholars to St. Francisville for lectures, panel discussions, book study groups and spirited social events. A must for lovers of Percy and the writers he influenced, this unique small-town literary festival sells out every year. Early-bird tickets on sale through March 31. 2018 Topics and PanelistsWalker Percy, Race, and Confederate Memory
Patrick Connelly (Mississippi College), returns to discuss Percy's unique perspective, which was shaped by his upbringing in the segregated South, his deep familiarity with Civil War history and Lost Cause mythology, and his post-conversion support for the Civil Rights movement. What does Percy have to teach us about contemporary racial concerns and debates over historical remembrance?Reading Walker Percy's Novels: A Book Discussion
Jessica Hooten Wilson (John Brown University) makes her THIRD festival appearance, this time presenting her new book Reading Walker Percy's Novels (LSU Press May 2018). Jessica will lead a lunchtime, book club-style discussion of Percy's The Last Gentleman. Searching for the Meaning of Life: Walker Percy's Correspondence with Robert Coles
Lawrence Rhu, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, will explore the long friendship between Walker Percy and famed Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles, with whom he shared a passion for the search for life's meaning. Rhu is curator of the letters of Coles and Percy.The Friendship of Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, Through the Eyes of their Children
Memories of the life-long friendship and correspondence between Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, shared during a light-hearted conversation between Mary Pratt Percy Lobdell and Huger Foote.All this … plus receptions, crawfish, craft beer, and the famous
Progressive Front Porch Tour & Bourbon Tasting Walker Percy (1916—1990) wrote novels that explored the “dislocation of man in the modern age.” Most of his work was set in New Orleans and around South Louisiana, including the semi-fictitious Feliciana, which the author based upon West Feliciana and the other Florida parishes. Percy’s debut novel, THE MOVIEGOER, won the National Book Award for Fiction, and was included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best English language novels from 1923—2005. In later works, including LOVE IN THE RUINS, THE LAST GENTLEMAN, and THE THANATOS SYNDROME, Percy continued exploring the search for meaning in an increasingly materialistic society via masterfully wrought tales delivered with a poetic Southern sensibility and informed by the author’s deep Catholic faith. Festival proceeds support the JULIUS FREYHAN FOUNDATION—an organization dedicated to restoring the historic Freyhan School building to serve as a community and cultural center for West Feliciana Parish.
Nancy Vinci
Davis Family Foundation | Susan and Jimbo Roland | Burns & Co. Realtor | Julie & Mitch Brashier | Couhig Partners, LLP | Kevin Couhig | James Dart & David Parker | Brady Flavin - State Farm | Louise and Bishop Charles Jenkins | Noelle and Sam LeBlanc | Polly and Conville Lemoine | The Levasseur Family | Record Agency | Lynda and Peter Truitt | Carly and Adam Whatley | Donna Wright | Janice Wynn |
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