September 25: William Faulkner’s 100th birthday.
This is Faulkner Centennial month, and there are so many celebrations and tributes taking place around the world that I've collected information about as many of them as I could find in a newly designed and enhanced Faulkner News page. Two of the tributes, from National Public Radio and on television via C-SPAN2, come via media which Faulkner hated. NPR will broadcast a three-hour special over three days (September 23-25), with all three hour-long segments being rebroadcast on Saturday, September 27. (Note: This is true for Mississippi Public Radio. Check your local listings.) The original program features Stacy Keach along with other critics and commentators, and each segment will also feature a dramatization of a Faulkner short story.

C-SPAN2, meanwhile, will broadcast one night's slate of lectures from the 24th Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, which took place at the University of Mississippi in Oxford from July 27 to August 1. C-SPAN recorded a discussion on "Faulkner and America," which included talks by Doreen Fowler, David Minter, and John Duvall.

In Mississippi, the key celebrations will take place on several fronts. On Faulkner’s birthday, Oxford will witness the dedication of a new (and controversial) statue in front of the City Hall. Designed by local sculptor William Beckwith, the statue will feature Faulkner sitting. On hand at the 10 a.m. ceremony will be fellow Mississippi writers Shelby Foote and Willie Morris.

Later that same day, the University of Mississippi will commemorate Faulkner with a series of tributes and readings from his work. The program will begin at 2 p.m. in Fulton Chapel. At 3:30, the university will serve birthday cake in the Lyceum Circle, and at 6 p.m., Square Books will simply toast Faulkner ... with no speeches or readings.
Also on September 25, New Albany will begin its three-day Faulkner Centennial Celebration. Featuring dramatic performances, lectures, crafts, food, and fireworks, it promises to be quite a blast.
The City of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia -- Faulkner’s other hometown late in life -- will also feature a birthday celebration and free T-shirts to a limited number of book buyers.

In New Orleans, another of Faulkner’s one-time homes (briefly, however -- less than one year in 1925), the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society will sponsor a celebration which they hope will become an annual event.
And finally, in Washington, D.C., the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which was initially funded by Faulkner’s Nobel Prize winnings, will sponsor an all-day reading of The Sound and the Fury beginning at noon in Politics & Prose, a Washington, D.C., bookstore.

There are undoubtedly other Faulkner Centennial celebrations going on around the world this month, but these are among the biggest. Check the Faulkner News page for more information about all of these events.

New Faulkner Books
William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist, by Daniel J. Singal, is "a major new intellectual biography" from the University of North Carolina Press. It is being published in September 1997 to correspond with the author's 100th birthday. You can find out more and read excerpts at this web site sponsored by the publisher.