March 15, 2006 -- Grif Stockley, Dee Brown Fellow at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, will read from his biography "Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas," as part of Delta Blues Symposium XII: Delta Diversity, to be held on the campus of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Thursday, March 30, though Saturday, April 1.

Stockley’s reading will take place in the Mockingbird Room of the Student Union at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 30. He will also sign copies of his book.

Stockley, former staff attorney for the ACLU of Arkansas, has written six novels featuring Little Rock lawyer Gideon Page as protagonist: "Expert Testimony," "Probable Cause," "Religious Conviction," "Illegal Motion," "Blind Judgment," and "Salted by Fire." He has won the Porter Prize for fiction and is a member of the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame.

His first non-fiction work, "Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919," was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2001. It won the Booker-Worthen Prize and received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History.

The Daisy Bates biography recounts the life and contributions of an often-neglected civil rights pioneer. The book was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2005.

Currently, Stockley is completing a history of race relations in Arkansas for the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis in 2007.

Stockley’s reading, like all Symposium events, is free and open to the public.

-- information provided by the Delta Blues Symposium committee