Good food, craft beer and bourbon, live music, and a great time talking about books and Southern culture under the live oaks: That’s what the annual Walker Percy Weekend has to offer when it returns to celebrate the acclaimed novelist’s life and work while exploring the theme “The Speculative South,” May 31–June 1, 2024 in St. Francisville, Louisiana. 

Intellectually serious but broadly accessible, the 2024 Walker Percy Weekend invites fans of Southern literature to pursue appreciation of Percy’s thought and writing while attending presentations by renowned Percy scholars, lectures, panel discussions, readings,  presentations, and social and culinary events inspired by the author’s most famous works. Events take place at locations around St. Francisville’s historic district, May 31–June 1, 2024.

Writers, readers, and thinkers participating in the 2024 Walker Percy Weekend will explore the theme "The Speculative South." In the popular imagination, Southern fiction has readily been associated with the past. But what about depictions of the future? In his novels Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy presented readers with a speculative future—a dystopian Louisiana in which American society has become increasingly fragmented socially, racially, religiously, and ethically—as a means of investigating what he perceived of as society's disintegration. In the decades since, contemporary novelists have continued to offer speculative visions of a future South, challenging readers to consider how the decisions we make today shape the society our children will inhabit tomorrow.

Walker Percy (1916—1990) wrote novels that explored the “dislocation of man in the modern age.” Most of his work was set in New Orleans and around South Louisiana, including the semi-fictitious Feliciana, which the author based upon West Feliciana and the other Florida parishes. Percy’s debut novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction and was included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best English language novels from 1923—2005. In later works including Love in the Ruins, The Last Gentleman and The Thanatos Syndrome, Percy continued exploring the search for meaning in an increasingly materialistic society via masterfully wrought tales delivered with a poetic Southern sensibility and informed by the author’s deep Catholic faith.

The Julius Freyhan Foundation

Festival proceeds support the Julius Freyhan Foundation - an organization dedicated to restoring the historic Freyhan School building to serve as a community and cultural center for West Feliciana Parish. We are delighted to report that as of January, 2024, restoration work on the Freyhan School building has commenced, with an expected completion date of December, 2024. FINALLY!

Freyhan Foundation
P. O Box 338, St. Francisville, LA 70775
225-635-6330.