Alabama poet laureate Ashley M. Jones will be the keynote speaker this week at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium in Columbus – a gathering that highlights authors and poets from across the South.

The symposium takes place Thursday to Saturday at Mississippi University for Women and is free to the public.

Jones is Alabama’s first Black poet laureate, holding the post from 2022 until next year. She will present her new poetry collection, “Lullaby for the Grieving,” which is inspired by her father’s death and deals with themes of grief, family and heritage.

“I hope the audience hears my humanity, and I hope they take a moment to consider how vital it is right now to hold that truth – our shared humanity – very close,” Jones said.

The symposium is named after Mississippi author Welty, who attended MUW, which was then called Mississippi State College for Women. This year’s theme, “Secrets and Revelations: A Dark Thread Running Through My Story,” is inspired by Welty’s novel “Losing Battles.”

Among the presenters are the winners of the symposium’s two writing competitions – the Welty Prize and the Eudora Welty Ephemera Prize for High School Creative Writing.

The Welty Prize honors works of scholarship. Winners get their manuscript published by the University Press of Mississippi and $2,000 from the university.

This year’s Welty Prize winner is drea brown, a professor of English at Texas State University who does not capitalize their name. Their manuscript, “Conjuring the Haint: The Haunting Poetics of Black Women,” looks into “the intimacies of haunting and grief in Black women’s lived experiences and literary productions.” 

“I hope that folks can hold the complexity of ghosts, of grief and fullness of Black women’s humanity,” brown wrote.

The Ephemera Prize goes to five high school students, who receive $200 and lunch with other authors at the symposium.

T. Kris Lee is the symposium’s acting director and professor of English/creative writing at MUW. He said the Ephemera prize has many benefits for young writers.

“It affirms the value of these young voices, so often full of fresh perspectives, creativity and emotional honesty,” he said. “By placing their work beside established voices, a very real sense of validation is given to their ideas and experiences, showing that youth voices matter in broader conversations.”

The university will host 12 authors, including several from Mississippi. Poets Kendall Dunkelberg, Olivia Clare Friedman and Samyak Shertok will share their work. Joining them are Robert Busby, who published a collection of stories about a fictional town in north Mississippi; Addie E. Citchens, who published a novel set in a fictional town in the Mississippi Delta; and Lauren Rhoades, who published a memoir about her interfaith family.

Lee said he looks forward to seeing all the writers present their work. 

“I’m excited to be part of that energy, to discover new voices and to feel the spark of inspiration that only comes from being in a room full of people who love words as much as I do,” he said.