Lee Smith and Hal Crowther
Okra to Opera Conference

Novelist Lee Smith and journalist Hal Crowther headline Converse College’s “Okra to Opera” Southern culture conference April 9-14 on the college’s campus in Spartanburg. More than 50 scholars, artists and experts from throughout the Southeast will round out a week-long events series that truly offers something for everyone. The two writers, who are married and live in Chapel Hill, will address the question of whether there is still a distinctive Southern culture. They will speak, and sign books, in Daniel Recital Hall, Wednesday, April 13 at 7:30 pm.

Lee Smith has published 12 novels and four collections of short stories. She is a recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award. In 2010, she published a collection of new and selected stories, "Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger."

Hal Crowther's collection of essays, "Gather at the River," was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism. Cathedrals of Kudzu, published in 2000, has been one of the New South's most honored and critically acclaimed works of non-fiction.

Speakers at the six-day conference will address topics from country music to collard greens, from poetry to paintings, from tobacco twine to the Tupelo Honey Café. More information can be found on the conference website: www.converse.edu/OkraToOpera.