2026 Festival

At UT Chattanooga, April 9-11, 2026

the competition

Find out who placed in our 2026 SLF Undergraduate Writing Competition

membership benefits

Join us for the 2026 Southern Literary Festival

Keynote Speaker

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Keynote Speakers

W. Ralph Eubanks

W. Ralph Eubanks serves as the Black Power at Ole Miss Faculty Fellow. He has published three works of scholarship and memoir, including 2021's A Place Like Mississippi (Timber Press) and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South (2011, U of Mississippi Press). Eubanks' writing has received numerous awards and accolades, including a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship. He divides his time between Oxford, MS and Washington, D.C.

chris dowling

Chris Dowling is an American screenwriter and film director. He has written screenplays for several feature films, including Blue Miracle (2021) and Acidman (2022), starring Thomas Haden Church and Dianna Agron. Dowling's director credits include the 2014 drama Where Hope Grows. A native of Flowood, MS, Dowling currently resides in Dallas.

Keynote Speaker

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