POTSDAM -- James Hall, an assistant English and communication professor at SUNY Potsdam, will receive the 2011 George Garrett New Writing Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers during the Chattanooga Arts & Education Council’s (AEC) Conference on Southern Literature.

Hall is the author of “Now You’re the Enemy,” which won the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series Prize. His poems and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals including TriQuarterly, Boston Review and American Poetry Review.

Hall has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lambda Literary Foundation and the Texas Institute of Letters.

The event will take place April 14 to 16 in the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Chattanooga.

Founded in 1987, the Fellowship of Southern Writers (FSW) is a not-for-profit organization that recognizes and encourages excellence in southern literature.

The FSW commemorates outstanding literary achievement, encourages young writers through awards, prizes and fellowships, and recognizes distinction in writing by election to membership.

Humorist and author Roy Blount, a frequent guest on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me” and “Prairie Home Companion,” is among the speakers at the literary festival.

Featured writers include novelist Charles Frazier, who received the National Book Award for his novel, Cold Mountain; Richard Bausch, 2010 winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and short story writer Elizabeth Spencer, subject of a documentary that will premiere at the AEC event.

Perennial festival favorites – novelists Lee Smith and Clyde Edgerton -- will also make presentations during the event.

The 2011 conference marks the 21st anniversary of the Fellowship, established by Cleanth Brooks, Louis Rubin, Shelby Foote and other outstanding authors from the South.

For more information about the conference visit www.SouthernLitConference.org or call 1-800-267-4232.