Anna Bell Smith Literary Festival

This year, we are partnering with Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont to provide optional breakout sessions hosted by the guest author and co-directors of the Tremont Writers Conference. Authors will have priority seating for these sessions, but they are also open to the public as space is available.

9:30 – 10:15 AM: Writing Home with Jeremy Lloyd (library grounds, meet in foyer) – Modern people tend to think of themselves as something other than a part of what today we call “nature” or the “environment.” This dualistic view has led to alienation from and abuse of what was once widely regarded as “Creation.” Locating sources for re-enchantment in our lives becomes possible when we reflect on the wealth of stories each of us has to share about the people, objects, and creatures that dwell in the places we call home. We’ll do just this during this session while practicing a simple exercise to awaken our imaginations and using the library grounds outdoors for inspiration. Jeremy Lloyd teaches on the faculty of Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, where he designs and facilitates immersive, weeklong experiences in nature inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park for learners ages nine to ninety. He is the author of A Home in Walker Valley: The Story of Tremont, and his work has appeared in publications such as Sierra, Gray’s Sporting Journal, High Country News, The Sun, Fourth Genre, North Carolina Literary Review, Smokies Life, and several anthologies. A musician, he co-directs the Tremont Writers Conference and lives with his family on the Little River.

10:30 – 11:15 AM: Poet Frank X Walker (Learning Lab) – Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is the author of 13 collections of poetry and the children’s book, A is for Affrilachia.

10:30 – 11:15 AM: Publishing to Protect a Park with Frances Figart (Sharon Lawson Room) – As the creative services director for Smokies Life, an educational nonprofit partner to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Frances Figart and her team are responsible for producing a magazine, a blog, a regular newspaper column, books and brochures, and a plethora of other creative projects. Learn how her work helps to protect life in the park, how she came to co-direct the Tremont Writers Conference, and how she accidentally became a children’s book author along the way. Frances Figart directs the creative team at Smokies Life, edits Smokies Life Journal and Smokies LIVE blog, publishes books and brochures, and curates a column, “Word from the Smokies,” which appears regularly in the Asheville Citizen Times and Smoky Mountain News. She has authored three books for young readers: a road ecology fable, A Search for Safe Passage, that won Publication of the Year in 2022 from the Public Lands Alliance; Mabel Meets a Black Bear, published in 2023 to educate readers about how to be BearWise; and Camilla and the Caterpillars (September 2024), supporting the Homegrown National Park movement that advocates for the cultivation of native plants and trees on private lands to strengthen species diversity.

11:30 – 12:15 p.m. Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who Killed Medgar Evers? with Reed Massengill (Sharon Lawson Room) – Knoxville native Reed Massengill graduated from UT in 1984 with a bachelor’s in journalism. The nephew of Byron De La Beckwith, convicted (in his third trial) of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Massengill’s first book, Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who Killed Medgar Evers? was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and garnered considerable acclaim. He is today a writer and photographer who divides his time between Knoxville and New York. His articles and photography have appeared in the New York Times, Interview, Connoisseur, Art & Understanding, Forbes, Genre, Essence, Swim, and Paramour, among others.

12:30 – 1:15 p.m. Forever Belle: Sallie Ward of Kentucky with Randy Runyon (Sharon Lawson Room) – Randy Runyon will speak about his new book, Forever Belle: Sallie Ward of Kentucky, whose protagonist, said a recent reviewer, “lived life her way and consequences be damned.” Cultured and attractive, she grew up in Louisville, where she had the nerve to wear makeup and rouge, the latest fashions from Paris, and smoke cigars. She inspired lovers, poetry, and duels. Smitten with her beauty, Kentucky volunteers fought under her banner in the war with Mexico. Her influential father persuaded the legislature to pass a law giving her grounds to divorce the first of her four husbands. Her second marriage, though initially happy, foundered on the shoals of the Civil War, and ended in suicide. Sallie’s only surviving son would imitate his father by leaping to his death decades later, leaving behind a daughter who grew up to become a Broadway actress, a Hollywood writer, and a dominant figure in radio, having inherited her grandmother’s will to succeed.

Location: BCPL Main Gallery
This event is free and open to the public.