Help Sustain an Oxford Tradition
For more than 30 years, the Oxford Conference for the Book has attracted literary luminaries to the University of Mississippi and helped fuel Oxford and the university’s distinctive reputation as a cultural mecca.
Thanks to many years of support from Mississippi’s arts and humanities grants, the Oxford Conference for the Book has been able to thrive. Due to recent shifts in priorities in federal funding to state agencies, we need your help to make the 2026 Oxford Conference for the Book as successful and as impactful as it has been for decades.
OCB attracts luminaries to UM, such as former national poet laureate Natasha Tretheway, who appeared at 2025's conference.Please stand in the gap for us and help fully fund the Oxford Conference for the Book!When the conference began in 1993 as a joint venture by UM’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Square Books, few could have predicted that this three-day gathering of writers, readers, scholars, publishers, students, booksellers, teachers and journalists would still be an important and highly anticipated event in the literary world decades later. The conference celebrates books, writing and reading and also deals with practical concerns on which the literary arts and the humanities depend, including literacy, freedom of expression and the book trade itself.
Conference events attract big crowds.Campus partners, community groups and private donors all work to make this event successful year after year. This is your chance to join them!
$32
32nd Annual OCB
The 2026 Oxford Conference for the Book will be the 32nd hosted by the university's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. To ensure that the 32nd book conference is just as amazing and impactful as the first, the 10th, the 20th or the 30th, please make a gift!
$93
1993's Auspicious Beginning
The first Oxford Conference for the Book featured a dazzling lineup of literary greats: from locals like the late Willie Morris, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown, to luminaries like William Styron, Kaye Gibbons and George Plimpton. The first book conference helped establish Oxford and the University of Mississippi as a literary mecca, a place for people to gather to study the impact of Southern writers on the world. The first conference famously ended with a 40th birthday party celebration for the prestigious literary magazine, "The Paris Review," at a catfish house in Paris, Mississippi. The quirky yet intellectual nature of the Oxford Conference for the Book remains part of its charm. Please give to honor the conference's first year!
$600
Gown and Town
The Oxford Conference for the Book is one of those rare academic events hosted by a university that is widely attended by locals. In fact, more than 600 people, many of whom are not affiliated with Ole Miss, attend OCB events each year. To make sure this Oxford tradition continues, please give $600.
$1,200
The Children Are Our Future
One of the most impactful parts of the Oxford Conference for the Book is the outreach to area schoolchildren. Thanks to a generous donor and several local partners, more than 1,200 first- and fifth-grade students receive their own book and then listen to a presentation by the book's author. The children's conference encourages literacy and helps get area kids off the internet and into books — which, as any parent can tell you, is priceless. Give $1,200 to honor OCB's investment in our future readers!
$5,000
Angel Investor
Private donors, in addition to arts and humanities grants, have always sustained the Oxford Conference for the Book. By giving $5,000 today, you can replace the full amount of one of the previous year's grants.