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Susana M. Jimenez Placer, a Ph.D. candidate at the Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Spain, delivered a paper on Katherine Anne Porter at the Fourth International Conference on the Short Story in English organized by and held at the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa, June 7-11, 1996. The conference, whose theme was "Many Cultures, Many Voices," featured twenty-three panels on different aspects related to the study of the short story including "Social and Political Perspectives," "Latin American Influences," "Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives," "Language and Metaphor," "Regionalism" and "Female Identity in the Short Story." Ms. Jimenez presented her paper, "Laura's Approach to Language and Symbols in Katherine Anne Porter's 'Flowering Judas': Her Unconscious Rejection of the Short Story," on a panel entitled "Women Writers." She plans to travel to the University of Maryland at College Park to do research for her dissertation on Katherine Anne Porter in the near future.

On Saturday, December 14, 1996, the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Festival was celebrated in Kyle, Texas, where Porter lived from about 1892 to 1902. It featured a writing competition for authors of all ages. The principal speaker was Don Graham, J. Frank Dobie Regents' Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, who also served as one of the judges of the writing competition. The adult winners were Linda S. Bingham and Mark Busby, both of Wemberley, Texas. They both were recognized for short stories, Bingham's "2,000 Years of Forgetting" and Busby's "The Possum." Houstonian Alicia Austin was awarded the prize for teens, 15 to 18, for her poem "Blue Roses." The prize for younger teens, 11 to 14, went to Laurel Green of New Braunfels, Texas, for her story "Landerel Heights." Two poems, "Not It," by Meredith Orf of Austin, Texas, and "The Dark Hour," by Rebecca Hyde of Kyle, captured the awards for children, 5 to 10. The contest is sponsored by Yana and David Bland, owners and operators of the Katherine Anne Porter Museum in Kyle, and the local newspaper, the Kyle Eagle. Paul Porter provided the awards for the winners.

The society's session at the annual Conference on American Literature of the American Literature Association took place on Friday, May 31, 1996. George Hendrick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chaired the session which included two papers and a panel discussion. Gary M. Ciuba of Kent State University, Trumbull, delivered "'If I am to be the heroine of this novel': Desire, Deceit, and 'Old Mortality.'" The title of the paper presented by the University of Maryland at College Park's Beth Alvarez was "'Royalty in Exile': Pre-Hispanic Art and Ritual in 'Maria Concepcion.'" The papers were followed by a panel discussion, "Katherine Anne Porter Research in Progress/Research Needed," moderated by George Hendrick. Panelists included Gary Ciuba, Beth Alvarez, Darlene Unrue (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Jewel Spears Brooker (Eckerd College), and Janis Stout (Texas A & M University).

A short business meeting conducted by society president Darlene Unrue preceded the paper presentations. A copy of the financial report, the primary subject of the business meeting, appears elsewhere in the newsletter.