Keynote - Revival: Lost Southern Voices 2026

Join us for the Revival: Lost Southern Voices (RLSV) 2026 Keynote!

Shining A Light In The Dungeon:  Honoring Unappreciated Voices In The Hip Hop South

Regina Bradley in conversation with Monica Weatherly

The talk will be followed by a light opening reception.

RLSV is free and open to the public, but we do request registration. Please enter through the lower level, rear doors of the Decatur Library, as this takes place after the library has closed.

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

About the Speaker:

Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South. She is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, a faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal, and co-director of the Hip Hop Studies Consortium at Georgia State University. A prominent public voice and leading scholar on contemporary southern Black life and hip hop culture, Dr. Bradley is the author of the critically acclaimed book Chronicling Stankonia: the Rise of the Hip-Hop South. Chronicling Stankonia was named one of the “Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2022. She is also the editor of An OutKast Reader, a collection of essays about OutKast, and co-editor of the third edition of That’s the Joint!: the Hip Hop Studies Reader with Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal.

About the Conversation Partner:

Monica Lee Weatherly is a poet, writer, and Professor of English at Georgia State University (Perimeter College). She is the 2023 winner of Georgia Author of the Year for her chapbook of poetry, It Felt Like Mississippi, a 2023 Key West Literary Seminar Workshop Fellowship recipient, and the 2021 winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Tulane Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Nzuri Journal, Merge Literary Magazine, Obsidian, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Auburn Avenue. She is a member of the Georgia Writers Association and listed in the Georgia Writers Registry. Her writing often focuses on the culture and experiences of people of color in the American South.

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.