In their most recent novels, Christopher Castellani and Jocelyn Cullity base their stories on actual people (Tennesse Williams in Castellani's Leading Men) or events (the 1857 siege of Lucknow in Cullity's Amah and the Silk-Winges Pigeons.) How did they merge fact and fiction? What are the responsibilities of a storyteller to stick to the facts, if the truth that they're looking for lies elsewhere?

The writing and writers of rural America are as rich and varied as those of any American landscape. These three writers give voice to real and imagined lives that resonate from the holler to the rolling hills, from splendid isolation to cacophonous interference; from margin to center. Panelists: Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Garrard Conley, Crystal Wilkinson