Angela Ball is professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she directs the Center for Writers. Her most recent volume of poetry is Talking Pillow (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press). Talking Pillow celebrates love as amazement, sustenance, and the progenitor of scarce-believable loss. The book centers around the sudden death of the author’s long-time partner and travels outward to events in the world at large.

Ball is the author of four previous poetry collections: The Museum of the Revolution: 58 Exhibits, Possession, Quartet, and Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds. She is the recipient of an NEA grant and has twice won the Poetry Prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Her work has been frequently anthologized and featured in Best American Poetry and on the Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.

Anne Freeman and the Garbage Sons are an indie/rock band based in Oxford and include Freeman, Eric Carlton, Kell Kellum, Harrison Smith and Ben Yarbrough. They have recorded their first album at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, MS, and are working to announce their release date in the near future. 

Thompson Springs is an up-and-coming indie band from Madison, Wisconsin, founded and fronted by singer-songwriter Matt Smith. The band recently released their debut EP Artifacts, recorded in Brooklyn and Milwaukee with Rob Laakso of Kurt Vile and the Violators and a follow up, Fond Regards. The band spent October touring Europe.