Lord said even though he’s spent most of his life near Washington, D.C., he’s excited to present his story in Natchez, where he first reported headlines like “The English test in Ms. Turner’s class was harder than usual,” in The Natchez Echoes, Lord mocked.

“My house is seven miles from the Washington monument, but as far as where I’m from — I’m from Mississippi. I’m from Natchez, Mississippi,” he said.

The theme of this year’s celebration is “Legends, Lore, and Literature: Storytelling in the South,” a subject for which Lord has seen his fair share after reading copy from hundreds of reporters around the country and writing some story-telling kindling of his own.

The festival, which will continue from Thursday to Feb. 26, will bring in some faces from around the South and nation, and some, like Lord, who will be returning home or live in walking distance to the Natchez Convention Center.

Other guests include Julia Reed, author, contributing editor for Newsweek, commentator on CNN and contributor to a number of publications including Garden and Gun, The New York Times and Vogue; George E. Lankford, a professor emeritus of folklore at Lyon College in Batesville; Terrence Roberts, Lawrence “Larry” Wells, owner of the Yoknapatawpha Press in Oxford, who will speak about “The Faulkner’s I Knew: William Faulkner and his Niece; Dean Faulkner Wells,” Marcelle Bienvenu, a food columnist for The Times (New Orleans) Picayune; and Charles C. “Chuck” Bolton, author and head of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Frank X. Walker, editor and associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky, with a talk called “After Medgar: No more Fear.”

For a detailed agenda, visit www.colin.edu/nlcc or see the NLCC special section in Wednesday’s edition of The Democrat.

“I do think Southern people have a better knack for telling stories,” Lord said.

Talking to people — stranger or no — is a tradition rooted Southern culture, Lord said. If two Southerners get together, he said, they’re bound to try to draw some connection within minutes.

“It’s just in folks’ blood.”