Join us for the fourth and final panel of Revival: Lost Southern Voices (RLSV) 2026!

Beyond Bars: Celebrating Incarcerated Voices through Creative Writing Courses

Featuring Nellie Cox, Cameron Ervin, Beth Gylys, and Katherine Perry

Moderated by Andy Rogers

RLSV is free and open to the public, but we do request registration. This event takes place in the Decatur Library Auditorium, during normal library hours. Due to our security protocols, this means you will need to enter the library through the upper level, rear doors, and take the elevators to G.

We hope you'll view the full conference schedule and register for the other panels as well!

About the Speakers:

Nellie Cox lives in Georgia and writes poems about the doomsday cult of her youth and high control fundamentalism. She is the managing editor for Beyond Bars, a literary journal that amplifies the voices of incarcerated writers. Nellie will graduate from GSU in May with her PhD in poetry. Most recently, her work can be found in SoFloPoJo, The Louisville Review, and Tulsa Review.

Cameron Ervin is currently attending Georgia State University, working on completing his associate’s degree in general studies. He is also a formerly incarcerated individual and is reestablishing himself in the community as a returning citizen. While incarcerated, Cameron was a program mentor and class facilitator at Walker State Prison, the United State’s first and only fully faith and character-based prison. While at Walker, Cameron was a participant in the Prison Education Project and is on pace to graduate with a 4.0 GPA with Honors in the Spring.

Award-winning writer, Distinguished Professor, and co-founder and Principal Investigator of Beyond Bars, a literary magazine for and by incarcerated writers, Beth Gylys has published five books and three chapbooks, with a forthcoming chapbook from Harbor Editions. Her last two full-length collections (The Conversation Turns to Wide Mouth Jars—co-written with Cathy Carlisi and Jennifer Wheelock—and Body Braille) were both named Books All Georgians Should Read. Her poetry has recently appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, The James Dickey Review, SWWIM, and on the Best American Poetry blog.

Katherine D. Perry is Professor of English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University on the Clarkston campus. She is also the director of Writing Across the Curriculum and a co-founder of GSU's Prison Education Project. She has been teaching college-level writing and literature courses in prisons since 2004. Her full-length book of poetry, Long Alabama Summer, was published in 2017, and her chapbook, Smaller Versions, was published in 2024. She lives in Decatur.

About the Conversation Partner:

Dr. Andy Rogers is a Professor of English at the Perimeter College of Georgia State University. Along with Dr. Katherine Perry, he co-founded and co-coordinated the Georgia State University Prison Education Program (GSUPEP), which conferred the first degrees in prisons in Georgia, volunteered in four additional prisons, and ran a bridge to college program in all juvenile correctional facilities in the state of Georgia. Dr. Rogers currently serves as Coordinator of the relaunched Georgia State University Reentry Education Initiative (GSUREI).

About the Festival

Revival: Lost South­ern Voic­es, a fes­ti­val for read­ers, cel­e­brates his­tor­i­cal­ly exclud­ed, erased, or mar­gin­al­ized South­ern voic­es. Dur­ing this annu­al con­fer­ence, invit­ed pre­sen­ters dis­cuss South­ern authors or artists whose works are out-of-print or oth­er­wise do not receive the atten­tion they deserve. We invite the pub­lic, schol­ars, stu­dents, writ­ers, and inquis­i­tive read­ers to join the con­ver­sa­tion as we con­tin­ue to dis­cov­er and revive these Lost South­ern Voices.