The writer Jesmyn Ward (USA), Pass Christian, Mississippi, April 3, 2023. Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan
Jesmyn Ward, the two-time National Book Award winner from DeLisle, MS, will be the featured guest when the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour returns to the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Saturday, August 24 at 7 pm at the Walter Anderson Museum (WAMA) in Ocean Springs, MS.
Tickets are $50 and $20 and are available at the museum and at the museum website, https://www.
Ward’s latest novel, Let Us Descend, will be available for early sale in paperback ahead of its official release on Monday, Aug. 26. The novel tells the harrowing story of a mother and daughter who are separated and sold in pre-Civil War New Orleans. The novel recently won the 2024 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction.
To get your copy of Let Us Descend signed by the author, contact WAMA at 228-872-3164.
Other guests on the Ocean Springs show will include New Orleans songwriter/guitarist Alex McMurray and Jackson, MS soul/jazz vocalist, Ally Durr.
The show is hosted by Jim Dees and house band, Paul Tate and the Yalobushwhackers. There will be no live broadcast; this show will air the weekend of Sept. 5-8 pm.
The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour can be heard on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, on air and online, every Saturday night at 7 pm. On the Gulf Coast, listeners may tune in to 90.3 FM Biloxi or online at https://www.mpbonline.org/.
Other affiliates include Alabama Public Radio, public radio stations throughout Tennessee, and KNCE in Taos, NM. The show can also be heard on platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud and iHeart Radio. More listener information at https://thackermountain.com/.
The Ocean Springs show caps off a busy month for the music and literature program, now in its 27th year. Other guests in August include country music superstars, Chapel Hart (Aug. 22- Aug. 25); Mississippi novelist Michael Farris Smith (Aug. 8 -11); bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes (Aug, 15-Aug. 18); Mississippi author Harrison Scott Key (Aug.22-Aug. 25); and Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Robert St. John and Anthony Thaxton with the Original Pinettes Brass Band and Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (Aug. 29- Sept. 1).
The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour begins its weekly fall schedule of live performances in Oxford, MS on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 6 pm at the Powerhouse Arts Center. Admission is free to all Oxford shows culminating in the season finale on Thursday, Nov. 14 at 6 pm.
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Michael Farris Smith
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Chapel Hart
