Eric Schlich is the author of the novel Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife (The Overlook Press). The novel is an accessible and big-hearted story that explores belief and forgiveness as a boy grapples with his faith and sexuality on a rollicking family road trip to Bible World.

Hilarious and moving, Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife is about self-discovery and the search for truth, wherever it takes you.

Schlich is the author of the story collection Quantum Convention, which received the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award in Fiction.

He lives in Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at the University of Memphis.

Effie Burt was born and raised in Oxford, Mississippi as one of twelve musically gifted siblings. She has been singing since the age of 13 with her family at churches and local musical events in Mississippi and Tennessee.

A now-proven performer at festivals and concert halls, Burt brings excitement to jazz, her first love, and engages audiences by belting R & B, her soothing blues and the homegrown sounds of gospel.

Keith Johnson is a traditional Mississippi bluesman who happens to be the great nephew of blues legend, Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield).

Keith (sometimes billed as “The Prince of the Blues”) and The Big Muddy Band have toured across Europe and Brazil. Johnson’s albums include Come to Mississippi and Sounds Like Christmas.

Johnson is a graduate of the Delta Music Institute audio engineering program at Delta State University.