Dear Jane, Tim, Susan, and Verbie,

All of us here join to thank you and your colleagues, Susan Robinson and
Rhoda Ruffner, for your considerable work in maintaining the university as
a significant host to the Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature.
We are grateful to join with the Arts and Education Council in welcoming
back to Chattanooga the tenth Conference.  You and Doris Betts, Chancellor
of Southern Writers, have assembled a world-class collection of writers
again in our city.  From the first few presentations, it is clear that an
unparalled opportunity to reflect on ideas, the work of writers, the body
of Southern Literature, and to fall in love again with reading is being
wonderfully presented to us all. Arlie Herron must have known years ago
that this would be the case.

We are grateful for this wonderful opportunity and for its reflection on
UTC as a place of ideas, of style, and substance.  Your authors are so
gracious.  It is a feast for our minds.

Thank you.

Bill Stacy