In that historic courtroom on the last day of the conference, Flynt stood to ask a question of Sena Jeter Naslund, originally of Birmingham, and Roy Hoffman, of Point Clear, about how to make characters come alive in both fiction and nonfiction works, while staying true to their lives and times.
Naslund's novel "Four Spirits" is set in the civil rights era of Birmingham when four girls were killed in the 16th Street Church bombing. Set in the near future, her latest novel "Adam and Eve" takes the creationism and evolution debate, a contemporary and unresolved subject raising Constitutional issues of its own, in an unexpected way.
Hoffman has traveled the state for the Press Register, writing compelling profiles of its famous and not-so-famous residents, which are captured in his recent “Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations.”
One of Hoffman's stories is about Johnnie Carr, an important female leader of the civil rights movement In Montgomery that began with the bus boycott there.
Sitting a few pews up from Flynt in the two-story courtroom, with its overhanging balcony where Scout watched the trial of an innocent black man, was Frye Gaillard, writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and Mobile native, who returned home several years ago to write “Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America.” Last year, Gaillard published "Alabama Civil Rights Trail: An Illustrated Guide to the Cradle of Freedom."
Flynt, whose scholarship and activism was honored in an anthology of essays about his ground-breaking research, writing and advocacy called "History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie," sat down to listen to their answers to his question. Hoffman and Naslund spoke of their craft and the stories behind their books and what it meant to be speaking in the courtroom memorialized in Lee's novel written more than a half-century ago.
Flynt's memoir, “Keeping the Faith,” comes out in August.
Many moments like these, stirring examples of lives of dedication and the power of words, occurred this past weekend during the three-day symposium in the town known as Maycomb in Lee’s iconic novel.
On Friday, Point Clear’s Winston Groom received this year’s Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama Writer.
Groom, while best known for writing “Forrest Gump,” is also a renowned author of history, with his latest, “Kearny’s March: The Epic Creation of the American West 1846-1848,” coming out this fall.
Writers with South Alabama roots such as Tom Franklin, Watt Key, Michael Knight, and others, read from their works and talked about writing during the conference.
The movie version of Key's book "Alabama Moon," based on his experiences as a child in the Point Clear area, recently premiered at the historic Crescent Theatre in downtown Mobile.
The festival began Thursday night, May 5, with Monroeville native and novelist Mark Childress and concluded Saturday with Fairhope writer and editor Sonny Brewer.
Childress' new novel is “Georgia Bottoms,” and Brewer’s latest is an anthology of nonfiction essays, “Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.”
Several times during the three days, you could hear people wondering whether Harper Lee, who turned 85 last month, might make an appearance at the conference. They knew it was unlikely, they said, but could not help hoping it might happen.
One woman, standing in a group outside the Old Courthouse, said she planned to stop by the place just a few blocks away, where she had been told you can still look up into the limbs among a grove of trees and imagine the treehouse where the young Nelle Harper Lee began writing.
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