Several area people have joined together to organize a new event for the Kosciusko area.
“Live From Barrister’s Hall,” will be held Thursday, May 12 at 6 p.m. at Barrister’s Hall on the historic downtown square in Kosciusko. Admission is free.
The event will be a radio hour-style program, similar to Thacker Mountain Radio. Mississippi Author Taylor Kitchings will read from his award winning book, Yard War, and the bluegrass band, The Carbon Brothers, will perform.
Kitchings, who is married to Kosciusko native Beth Shaw Kitchings, resides in Ridgeland and teaches English at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Jackson. Yard War, his first novel, is the winner of the 2016 Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. Yard War is also a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance 2015 Summer Okra Pick.
Yard War focuses on a group of boys confronting racism in Mississippi in the 1960s. A white kid tosses a ball around with the maid’s black son, and it throws the whole suburban town for a loop.
This was a state of affairs Kitchings knows well; he grew up in Jackson during this period when desegregation laws had been passed across America but were not yet complied with in Mississippi.
The Carbon Brothers are a Hattiesburg-based duo known for their harmonies and their talents on the guitar and mandolin. The duo plays throughout the Southeast, and this event will be their first performance in Kosciusko.
Boswell Media will air the hour-long show live on Cruisin’ 98.3 FM.
Plans to continue similar events at Barrister’s Hall are in the works. Richard Carter, Kosciusko attorney and owner of Barrister’s Hall, will serve as emcee for the evening.
“This is the type of event that I hope to bring into Barrister’s Hall — cultural events for the entire community,” Carter said. “I am so thankful that the Kosciusko Readers, Boswell Media and all the other sponsors are putting this event together and supporting the idea. Hopefully, it is the beginning of something great for Central Mississippi.”
Sponsors for the first event are The Readers’ Club of Kosicusko, Claude Julian’s Clothing Company, Boswell Media, Al Chadick Law Firm and Pickle & White Law Firm.
