Jeff Daniel Marion will receive the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers during the Chattanooga Arts & Education Council’s (AEC) Conference on Southern Literature, April 14-16. Marion is the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries.
Jeff Daniel Marion has published eight poetry collections, four poetry chapbooks and a children’s book. Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001 won the 2003 Independent Publisher in Poetry and was named Appalachian Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. Marion’s newest collection, Father, was published in 2009. From 1975 to 1980, he edited The Small Farm, a distinguished regional poetry journal that he founded. In 1979 Marion received the first Literary Fellowship awarded by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
Founded in 1987, the Fellowship of Southern Writers (FSW) is a not-for-profit organization that recognizes and encourages excellence in southern literature. The FSW commemorates outstanding literary achievement, encourages young writers through awards, prizes and fellowships, and recognizes distinction in writing by election to membership.
Humorist and author Roy Blount, a frequent guest on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and “Prairie Home Companion,” is among the speakers at the literary festival. Featured writers include novelist Charles Frazier, who received the National Book Award for his novel, Cold Mountain; short story writer and novelist Richard Bausch, 2010 winner of the Dayton Peace Prize; and short story writer Elizabeth Spencer, subject of a documentary that will premiere at the AEC event. Perennial festival favorites — novelists Lee Smith and Clyde Edgerton — will also make presentations during the event.
Other Fellowship prize recipients for 2011 include Gerald Barrax, Elizabeth Cox, Kate Daniels, Jerre Dye, Ernest Gaines, James Hall, Scott Russell Sanders, George Singleton and Minton Parks.
The event will take place April 14 to 16 in the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Chattanooga.