The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University is pleased to announce that Leonard Pitts, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Miami Herald, and Jesmyn Ward, 2011 National Book Award winner for her novel Salvage the Bones, will deliver the keynote addresses at the 7thAnnual Creative Arts Festival: The Legacy of Medgar Evers.
A two-day conference at Jackson State to be held on Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13, 2013, the Creative Arts Festival will feature more than 40 student performances and panel presentations in the JSU Student Center.
The Creative Arts Festival will begin with a panel discussion in JSU Student Center Theater at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 12, about the relationship between “Arts and Activism.” It will feature Pitts and Ward along with Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers and Executive Director of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, and it will be moderated by Dr. Michael Williams, a biographer of Medgar Evers and historian at Mississippi State University.
An opening reception and book signing on Friday night will be held at 6 p.m. at the Penguin Restaurant next door to the Student Center. The Festival will resume on Saturday morning with concurrent student presentations in the Student Center beginning at 8:00 a.m. with registration and with Leonard Pitts’ plenary address at 10:15 a.m. in the Student Center Theater. A luncheon, From the Gut to the Butt, dedicated to the history of Mississippi funk music, will be held at 11:45 a.m. in the Student Center Ballroom.
Jesmyn Ward’s address will conclude the Festival at 4:30 p.m. in the Student Center Theater on Saturday.
All events are free and open to the public.
For more information, visit the Center’s website at www.jsums.edu/margaretwalker or contact the Center’s staff at 601-979-2055 ormwa@jsums.edu.
This project is supported in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and in part from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.