Southern Literary Trail

The Southern Literary Trail is a cooperative project involving writers' homes and other literary landmarks in three states: Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Representatives from historic literary sites in eighteen Southern towns are planning events for a Tri-State Festival in March 2009.

The Southern Literary Trail Web site provides a calendar of the events planned for the Festival, information about the writers and their towns, and contact information for the member organizations. There is also a gallery of images of the writers created by artist Maralyn Wilson.

Midge Coates, Project Manager
This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape

Video: Update: William Bartram Lecture Now on YouTube

The William Bartram lecture given by Dr. John C. Hall (discussed in an earlier entry) has just been made available on YouTube.

Watch Dr. Hall's lecture on William Bartram on YouTube.

We have also added Dr. Hall's lecture to our SplashCast™ channel. To watch it here, scroll down and click on the Start button.

Midge Coates, Project Manager
This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape

SplashCast™ Added to Blog

If you scroll down a bit, you'll find a new addition to our This Goodly Land blog. The SplashCast™ application allows us to bring videos together from different sources and make them available to you in one convenient place.

We are currently showcasing the videos from the Albert Murray Symposium (mentioned in an earlier blog entry).

Click on the Start button in the middle of the screen to begin the Albert Murray "show" with the Introduction video. Hover your mouse cursor over the lower portion of the screen to access the controls and/or to select one of the other videos in this "show."

Click on the More Shows button to see videos on Tom Franklin, Homer Hickam, and Edward O. Wilson. We'll add more videos on our authors as they become available and/or as we locate them.

Midge Coates, Project Manager
This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape

This Goodly Land Fan Page on Facebook®

The “Find us on Facebook®” badge you see in the left-hand column of this blog represents a new step for us. Facebook® is one of the two most widely known social networking programs (MySpace® being the other).

Although Facebook® is open to anyone over the age of eighteen, its user base skews towards high school and college students. Our Page is a way of spreading the word about This Goodly Land to a new audience.

If you’re a Facebook® member, please check out our This Goodly Land Page and become a fan. If you aren't a member (yet), you can still see a public version of our Page.

View This Goodly Land’s Page on Facebook®.

Midge Coates, Project Manager
This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape

"Support the Arts" Car Tag Grants

This Goodly Land would like to thank every one of you that has bought a "Support the Arts" Alabama license plate. The extra money you paid to get that plate went into a special fund that supports projects in the arts.

This Goodly Land has benefited from two grants that came from this fund. The first provided seed money to help our project get up and running, while the most recent enabled us to launch our new feature "This Day in Alabama Literary History." Other projects from the Alabama Center for the Book (our parent organization) have also benefited from this fund, most recently the 2008 Alabama Book Festival.

As funding gets harder to come by and belts get tightened, programs that allow private citizens to make a contribution to the public good become increasingly valuable. Please thank your Alabama legislators for this program, and tell them you're proud to live in a state that values the arts.

And, if you haven't bought one of these license plates yet, please consider it. Thanks.

Midge Coates, Project Manager
This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape