History
In 1983 Tennessee Williams, American playwright and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, left the residual portion of his estate to Sewanee: The University of the South as a memorial to his grandfather, the Reverend Walter E. Dakin, who studied at Sewanee’s School of Theology in 1895. Mr. Williams directed in his will that a fund be established to encourage “creative writing.” This fund supports the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a growing number of residencies by which Tennessee Williams Fellows Mark Richard, Elizabeth Dewberry, Tony Earley, Ann Patchett, Roberta Allen, Ron Fitzgerald, Daniel Anderson, A. Manette Ansay, Lisa Shea, Jessica Goldberg, Josip Novakovich, Claire Messud, Stephanie Fleischmann, William Gay, Thomas Moran, Daisy Foote, Richard Schmitt, Elwood Reid, Dan O’Brien, Tom Franklin, Leah Stewart, Hilary Bell, Kent Nelson, Arlene Hutton, Joe Osterhaus, Ellen Slezak, Dominic Taylor, Andy Bragen, Thomas Lakeman, and David Roby have conducted workshops in the college and pursued their own writing.
The Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fund has made possible two other undertakings. The Sewanee Writers’ Series, inaugurated in 1998, has published collections of poetry and short stories, plus novels and plays by John Bricuth, Philip Stephens, Greg Williamson, Charles Martin, Andrew Hudgins, Daniel Mueller, Adrianne Harun, Lily Tuck, Richard Schmitt, Brent Benoit, Greg Williams, and Horton Foote. Also in 1998, the Tennessee Williams Performing Arts Center opened in Sewanee. This adaptable 150-seat theater memorializes Mr. Williams’s art and testifies to his vision for writers.
The Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, a program geared toward high school writers, moves into its 19th season. Inquiries may be directed to Elizabeth Grammer (egrammer@sewanee.edu or 931-598-1541).
The Sewanee School of Letters, a summer graduate program offering the Master of Arts in English and American Literature and the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, enters its seventh session this summer. Inquiries may be directed to Margaret Binnicker (mbinnick@sewanee.edu or 931-598-1636).
Sewanee is also home to America’s oldest literary quarterly, the Sewanee Review. Now in its 120th year of publication, the Review has published some of the most influential writers and critics of its time.
Enjoying what one contemporary poet has called Sewanee’s “remoteness without cultural dislocation,” many writers have come here to live and work. These include William Alexander Percy, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle, Robert Penn Warren, Peter Taylor, Eleanor Ross Taylor, Monroe Spears, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy, James Agee, Caroline Gordon, Jean Stafford, Randall Jarrell, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Lowell, and more recently Richard Tillinghast, Wyatt Prunty, Andrew Hudgins, and Erin McGraw. The University is delighted to see new generations of writers drawn to Sewanee by the Conference.