2022 - The Haunted South

Featured Speakers

Margaret Renkl is the author of Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache in From the American South, winner of the Pen/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award For the Art of the Essay and Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, the 2020 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award and a finalist for the 2020 Southern Book Prize. A prolific writer of essays, Renkl is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

Sunny Eaton is the director of the Conviction Review Unit at the Davidson County District Attorney’s office, working to overturn wrongful convictions. An esteemed public defense attorney, Eaton has also practiced entertainment law on Music Row and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs.

T.R.C. Hutton (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 2009) is an Associate Professor at Glenville State College and is the author of Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South, winner of the 2014 Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association. His most recent book is entitled, Bearing the Torch: A History of the University of Tennessee.

New York Times bestselling author Tom Franklin will offer two events. He teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. His novel Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. His latest novel, The Tilted World, was written with his wife, esteemed poet Beth Ann Fennelly.

For the full history of the featured speakers of the Belmont University Humanities Symposium, click here.

Download the full program here.