The state’s capital is about to be buzzing with all things bookish, as readers and writers descend on downtown Jackson on Saturday for the 11th annual Mississippi Book Festival.
Chris Kelly, who co-founded the JXN Book Club over the summer, is “beyond excited” for this weekend’s events. He and the club’s other co-founder, Kimar Cain, hosted the festival team at its first meeting in July and are eager to serve as unofficial event ambassadors.
“It’s like being Walmart greeters,” Kelly said. “We want to be a cheerful, thoughtful presence that builds excitement and keeps people engaged.”
Christopher Kelly, left, and Kimar Cain chat about the book they and members of the book club they started are currently reading, “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler, at Lemuria Books, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayThe book festival has grown from a one-day lawn party into a major economic and cultural engine for Jackson, drawing more than 8,000 book lovers and providing a counter-narrative to negative stereotypes. It has also spurred year-round educational programs to develop Mississippi’s next generation of writers.
This year’s lineup features former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Kate McKinnon, hip-hop boss Rick Ross, fiction icon George Saunders and a multitude of Mississippi’s own.
Kenzie Ragland, a Nashville transplant who founded the “JXN Book Girlies” book club in 2024, is especially eager to meet McKinnon.
She plans to attend the festival with a couple dozen other “Girlies.”
“Last year was my first year at the festival,” Ragland said, “and I was pleasantly surprised at how big it was.”
Ragland is most looking forward to returning to “Author’s Alley,” the festival’s big tent where independent authors and artists set up shop and sell their stories. “Getting to meet so many incredible lesser-known authors,” Ragland said, was a festival highlight and reason to return.
The book club hosts an online forum for its virtual membership, broken down into nine genre-specific groups. Ragland says each group hosts over 20 readers, with more popular genres, such as fantasy, meeting more regularly.
A culture showcase for Mississippi
With thousands of book lovers converging on the capital city, the festival is a major economic driver.
Liz Brister, president of Downtown Jackson Partners, said the festival is just what the region’s economy needs, proving that Jackson can showcase Mississippi culture for crowds from around the country and the world.
Though Mississippi is often “typecast in negative ways,” Brister said, “we should pat ourselves on the back” for what the festival says about Mississippi. “It demonstrates to visitors and residents the creative and literary spirit unique to our state.”
Crew members from Mississippi Tent and Party Rental erect tents outside the Capitol in Jackson on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, in preparation for the Mississippi Book Festival. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayEllen Daniels, the festival’s director, noted the event’s growing diversity of authors and panels.
Lauren Rhoades hosts an online monthly book club featuring authors connected to the South. It is on Rooted Magazine, an online platform featuring stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. Rooted runs a monthly column by Joseph Brown, a state prison inmate who has “been fighting his wrongful conviction on Parchman’s death row for more than thirty years.”
Rhoades, who came to Jackson in 2013 with AmeriCorps, now helps oversee grants for the state Arts Commission, one of the festival’s sources of funding. She is returning to the festival for the second year in a row to discuss her 2025 memoir, “Split Baby,” which chronicles the fractures of a childhood torn between two very different homes.
While the festival understandably features many writers who draw on the South’s literary heritage, there are also events such as a panel presented by the LGBTQ Fund of Mississippi that delves into the search for belonging, friendship and self-discovery.
Another panel called “Fathers and Sons” features award-winning journalist Tom Junod and portrait photographer Beowulf Sheehan, both of whom have recent works involving the theme of fatherhood.
Mississippi Today will also present a discussion featuring renowned analysts of the ongoing role of race in our country. The panel, called “the Soul of America,” will be aired on CSPAN.
‘A last frontier for civil discourse’
In today’s polarized political climate, “book festivals serve as a last frontier for civil discourse,” Daniels said. “There really is something for every audience.”
The book clubs described above provide a snapshot of the kind of engaged readers the festival brings together. However, the festival’s impact is increasingly felt in many developing writers’ lives well beyond the main event.
Tonja Murphy, the festival’s community engagement director, stressed that one of the biggest changes has been in the festival’s growing devotion to the practice of writing.
When Murphy took on her full-time role in 2022, she was tasked with developing a new initiative called “Turn the Page,” which brings authors into public schools across Mississippi. She said the program helps students find their literary voice by bringing in engaging authors who practice creative writing with them.
“Some of our schools are hours from Jackson, so not all students can get to the festival,” Murphy said. “Turn the Page really grew out of the festival’s own kids’ programming, when we stepped back and asked, what would it look like to take this to children across the state?”
Now in its fourth year, the program has reached classrooms from kindergarten through high school. “You know you’re doing something right when the schools regularly ask you, ‘Can we get on next year’s list?’,” Murphy said.
While Turn the Page was initially funded out of the festival’s budget, it now has its own annual fundraising campaigns, Daniels said. “Turn the Page has funders who are totally dedicated to its mission.”
Writing workshops for all ages have become central to the festival. This year’s event has four kids’ workshops, ranging from prose and creative writing to arts and crafts, in addition to a handful focusing on different genres and skillsets for youth and adults.
“Some of our country’s greatest writers are from Mississippi,” Murphy said. “Who’s to say that a child that attends one of our programs isn’t our next literary giant?”
In a state where adult literacy rates are still among the poorest in the nation, the wide reach of programs like Turn the Page is shaping Mississippi’s own storytelling future.
That such an initiative emerged from the book festival, whose programming has grown and become more diverse in recent years, signals that the book festival is nurturing new generations of readers and writers.
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