A quarter-century ago the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference tackled the issue of Faulkner and Race. In 2013, the 40th annual conference seeks to build on and complicate this earlier work by exploring the relationships between Faulknerâs oeuvre and a hemispheric corpus of black writing, with a particular emphasis on African American literature and intellectual production, from slave narrative to the contemporary era of Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Maryse Conde, Charles Johnson, Gloria Naylor, David Bradley, Randall Kenan, Edouard Glissant, Erna Brodber, Jesmyn Ward, Edwige Danticat, and so many others. Photo by Robert Jordan/Ole Miss Communications