MOBILE, Ala. — The Alabama Humanities Foundation is funding the Southern Literary Trail, a historic linking of Southern communities, towns and landmarks, for a month-long festival honoring some of the South’s greatest writers.

Commemorating 20th century Southern authors and playwrights, Alabama will join Georgia and Mississippi in the first tri-state trail of its kind.

With stops along 18 Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi towns between Natchez, Miss. and Savannah, Ga., events will take place at various libraries, museums, university campuses and courthouses during the entire month of March.

Trail towns will present tours, plays, films, lectures, readings and discussion panels celebrating Southern literature and its hometown authors, with special emphasis on the settings that influenced their works.

The trail will play a part in Eudora Welty’s centennial celebrations in Columbus, Natchez and Jackson, Miss., and will touch on the stories behind stories, such as the Montgomery, Ala., romance of Zelda Sayre and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Margaret Mitchell’s fascination with Civil War stories.

“The South’s literary heritage and the fortunes of good geography have presented the unique opportunity to unite Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi for a celebration of the region’s fiction writers from the 20th century with enduring significance. No other triumvirate of adjoining states can claim writers so dramatically influenced by place and home,” says William Gantt of Birmingham, the trail’s project director.

The Southern Literary Trail will “present programs led by humanities scholars and supplement the scholarly dialogue with plays and tours, which will take participants on a full journey into the places that laid the foundations for major American literature.”

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, made a rare public appearance by attending a Southern Literary Trail Fest event.

The “Christmas Memory” tour featuring Patricia Neal as Sook in a dramatic reading of Truman Capote’s classic story served as the induction to the trail and was enormously successful in both Monroeville and Demopolis in November.

Neal was joined by Broadway actor Joel Vig, who played Buddy.

Christmas Memory was inspired by Capote’s holiday seasons in Monroeville with an elderly cousin.

The performances at the Old Courthouse Museum in Monroeville and at the Demopolis Town Hall were enjoyed by capacity-plus crowds.

The courtroom in Monroeville was carefully duplicated for the set of the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird, and it proved to be a moving theatrical venue for A Christmas Memory.

Lee remained after the show to visit with Neal and Vig, and she visited the Capote and To Kill A Mockingbird exhibits on display in the museum wings of the courthouse.

Some show organizers speculated that Lee had not returned to the courthouse since 1961, when she accompanied Gregory Peck on a local tour as part of preparation for the film.

Alabama towns and writers

•Demopolis: Lillian Hellman

•Hartselle: William Bradford Huie

•Mobile: Eugene Walter, William March and Albert Murray

•Monroeville: Truman Capote and Harper Lee

•Montgomery: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald

•Tuskegee: Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray

Georgia towns and writers

•Atlanta: Margaret Mitchell and Joel Chandler Harris

•Clayton: Lillian Smith

•Columbus: Carson McCullers

•Milledgeville: Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker

•Moreland: Erskine Caldwell

•Savannah: Flannery O’Connor

Mississippi towns and writers

•Clarksdale: Tennessee Williams

•Columbus: Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty

•Greenville: Walker Percy and Shelby Foote

•Jackson: Eudora Welty, Richard Wright and Margaret Walker Alexander

•Natchez: Richard Wright     

•Oxford: William Faulkner

Nearby SLT Alabama Trail events by city

•Monroeville, March 28, Old Courthouse Museum, Downtown Square

9-10 a.m.: registration, self-guided tour of exhibits

10-11:30 a.m.: Growing up with Harper Lee and Truman Capote

11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Maycomb County Picnic

12:30-2 p.m.: Moments of Courage, Against the Odds

2-4 p.m.: Museum Gift Shop Open

• Mobile

March 20, 7 p.m.: Mobile’s Literary “Gumbo” at Oakleigh, Oakleigh Historic House

March 21, 2 p.m.: Screening of “The Last of the Bohemians,” a documentary film about the late Mobile writer, Eugene Walter, The Ben May Main Library, Bernheim Hall

March 21, 5 p.m., Dinner at the Pillars, Menu by Eugene, The Pillars Restaurant

March 22, 2 p.m., Screening of the documentary film “Company K,” Crescent Theater

For complete calendar details (location, admission and contact information), full Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi Trail event dates, visit www.southernliterarytrail.org.