At 8 p.m., Ernest Gaines, award-winning author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Lesson Before Dying" will read from his works. (Visit Gaines' web site at http://www.state.lib.la.us/Dept/cftb/w/gaines/discove.htm.)

Before that, participants will savor the "Elegant Sunday Dinner in the Quarter"—a dinner of skillet-fried chicken, stone ground grits, collard greens cooked in pork stock, roasted canned tomatoes, dried peas, cucumbers in vinegar with sugar, corn pone, yeast rolls from potato starter, and pound cake with sugared berries and cream—food that might have been the Sunday dinner in the cabins of slaves in their quarters.

Speakers for the dinner, beginning at 5:30 p.m., include Edna Lewis (right), author of "The Taste of Country Cooking" and "The Edna Lewis Cookbook," along with Scott Peacock, chef at the acclaimed Watershed Restaurant and Lewis’s co-chef and co-author with her of "Coming Together to Cook." John Egerton, author of several books about the south, including "Side Orders and Southern Food: At Home, On the Road, and in History," will tell the diners about the food being served.

Before the meal, participants will have an afternoon of poetry, dance, and talks beginning at 1 p.m. in the Donaldson Brown Hotel and Conference Center Conference Room E. Doris Witt, author of "Black Hunger: Food & the Politics of U.S. Identity," will speak. Anne Kilkelly of Virginia Tech’s Department of Theatre Arts will perform a dance. Various poets will read, coordinated by Katherine Soniat and Alice Kinder of Virginia Tech’s English department. Books of many of the participants will be available for sale and signing. A quilt made by Giovanni’s students will be on display, along with food-inspired art works by members of the Blacksburg Regional Arts Association.

The afternoon talks, dances, and poetry readings and the 8 p.m. reading by Gaines are open to the public free of charge, and no registration is required.