The Monroeville Literary Festival
The Monroeville Literary Festival is two days of fun, food, and literary arts in the Literary Capital of Alabama. Born in 2020 from the 22 year heritage of the Alabama Writers Symposium, the Monroeville Literary Festival is a community event that welcomes friends, old and new, to explore the writing, music, and art of the literary South.
The Alabama Center for Literary Arts
The Alabama Center for Literary Arts supports, studies, and celebrates the literary voices of the state of Alabama—the voices that, in the words of noted Alabama literary historian Philip Beidler, articulate “the
complex possibilities of the Alabamian’s sense of place.” From Muscle Shoals to Mobile, from the end of the Appalachians to the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico, from the 19th century to the 21st, Alabama has
produced, and continues to produce, an astonishing number and variety of literary voices. Johnson Jones Hooper, Joseph G. Baldwin, Rebecca Harding Davis, Augusta Evans Wilson, Booker T. Washington, Helen Keller, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Shirley Ann Grau, Ralph Ellison, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Walker Percy, Albert Murray, Margaret Walker, Winston Groom, Jimmy Buffet, Mark Childress—all were born, raised, or spent significant portions of their lives in Alabama.
The Alabama Writers Symposium
From 1998 until 2019, the Monroeville Literary Festival was known as the Alabama Writers Symposium. The vision of Dr. John Johnson, President of Alabama Southern Community College, the Symposium brought together many of Alabama’s most distinguished writers and scholars for two days of readings, lectures, and discussions that combine the best elements of a literary festival and an academic conference. The Monroeville Literary Festival continues to uphold the original values and goals of the Symposium while also embracing new community partners.