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  Deborah Kehoe - Thomas Merton and Southern Writing. Presented for the Tuesdays with Merton Series, April 12, 2022.

  Thomas Merton’s appreciation for the work of notable literary artists of the southern United States and Global South is well-documented throughout his writing. Using the broadest of criteria, Merton, by virtue of having found his only stable earthly home in the hills of Kentucky, can also be identified as a “southern writer,” in whose works evidence of a deep affinity with the voices of the expansive South can be heard. In this talk, I hope to explore some of the classical and contemporary particulars as well as the implications of a poetic and spiritual connection between Merton and other writers of a compelling, enigmatic body of literature. Dr. Deborah Kehoe is a lifelong resident of Mississippi, born and raised in Jackson, now living in Oxford. She took a PhD in English with a concentration in twentieth-century literature from the University of Mississippi and is retired from a decades-long career of teaching rhetoric and literature in the red clay hills of her native state. She is a former member of the ITMS Board of Directors and current co-editor of The Merton Annual.