USM Will Host Visiting Writer Series Reading by Katy Simpson Smith on Feb. 7

The University of Southern Mississippi's School of Humanities will host a reading by novelist and historian Katy Simpson Smith at 7 p.m. on Feb. 7 in the International Center, Room 101 on the Hattiesburg campus. The event, which is part of the school's Visiting Writer Series, is free and open to the public.

Smith, who was born and raised in Jackson, is currently serving as the Eudora Welty Chair of Southern Literature at Millsaps College. She is best known for her novels “The Story of Land and Sea” and “Free Men.” Smith is also the author of “We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835,” which is a historical overview of white, black, and Native American mothering practices. Her writing has appeared in The Oxford American, Granta, Literary Hub, Garden & Gun, Catapult, and Lenny. Her third novel is scheduled to be published in 2020.

Smith attended Mount Holyoke College and received a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

USM has long welcomed internationally-acclaimed authors of poetry and fiction to give public readings and workshops. Since 2012, visiting writers have included  poets Kevin Young, Don Bogen, Alex Lemon, Caki Wilkinson, Adam Vines, Catherine Pierce, Farrah Field,  Allan Peterson, and  L. Lamar Wilson, as well as fiction writers Justin Torres, Lauren Groff, Mary Miller, Michael Farris Smith, and Peter Orner.

For more information on the series, contact Olivia Clare at olivia.clareFREEMississippi.