Kenny Brown played with the late bluesman R.L. Burnside for nearly 30 years following his apprenticeship with his neighbor, Joe Callicott, in Nesbit, MS. Brown has since forged a successful solo career, taking his north Mississippi hill country blues sound all over the world. His albums include Stingray, Meet Ya in the Bottom, and Goin’ Back to Mississippi.

In fall 2021, Brown appeared on Delta Kream, a bestselling album by The Black Keys and toured the South with the band.

Each June, Brown plays host to two dozen blues acts at the annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic. The veteran musician was recently honored by the Hill Country Blues Hall of Fame with the unveiling of his sculpted hands playing a guitar by noted Como, MS sculptor Sharon McConnell-Dickerson.

Cary Hudson is a singer-songwriter, former Oxford resident and front man for the beloved rock band, Blue Mountain. His solo albums include his latest, Hobolochitto, Town and Country (Daddy Rabbit Records) and Christmas in Mississippi.

He was chosen as one of the Top Ten Alternative Country Guitar Players by Gibson magazine and continues to tour and write songs in a career spanning 30 years. Hudson lives in New Orleans and hopes to someday, “whistle like Professor Longhair.”

Jianqing (John) Zheng is an author and editor. His book, A Way of Looking (Silverfish Review Press, 2021), won the Gerald Cable Book Prize. His forthcoming collection is The Dog Ears of Reeducation, a collection of poems reimagining his experience during the Cultural Revolution.

“Zheng’s form—half prose, half verse—is the sort of thing that might easily go wrong, but he uses it to give two succinct views of each moment.

“A Way of Looking is a heartfelt account of exile and homecoming. It is a significant addition to the Asian-American literature of immigration.”—Dana Gioia

Zheng is the editor of several volumes of the“Conversations” series for the University Press of Mississippi, a collection of interviews with writers. Also of note is his scholarly work on the largely unknown haiku of late author Richard Wright.

Much of Zheng’s academic work focuses on Southern writers and particularly chronicles life in the Mississippi Delta.

Since 1996, Zheng has been on the faculty of Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena, MS where he is currently chairman of the Department of English.

At Valley State, he edits Valley Voices: A Literary Review, a biannual journal of prose, poetry, interviews, criticism, and reviews from writers and scholars from the Mississippi Delta and elsewhere. Works published in Valley Voices have been selected for anthologies, scholarly books, and The Best American Poetry.