by Ezabelle Janssen, Staff Writer 

PASS CHRISTIAN (GG) — The Coast’s biggest literary kickoff has come and gone, leaving some wishing they hadn’t missed it. On Thursday, September 11, 2025, at the Mississippi Book Festival Coast Kickoff hosted by Cat Island Coffeehouse & Pass Christian Books, attendees had the chance to hear from remarkable voices in literature and culture—like Chad Holley, author of his first published piece, Shield the Joyous; Catherine Simone Gray, the celebrated female author of Proud Flesh; and Phillip Ashley Rix, a chocolatier turned author of For the Love of Chocolate. Those who missed out now only have the stories and insights to catch up on. 

Pass Christian Books co-owner, Scott Naugle, said, “It is a great honor to be the lead-off event for the Mississippi Book Festival, particularly in this 11th year. So it’s always, as any attendee I think would say, a great opportunity to meet with, speak to authors, have an enjoyable, literate evening, and just relax in the beautiful downtown Pass Christian area.” 

An enjoyable evening of literary discussion was had indeed. 

Memphis, Tennessee’s very own Willy Wonka, delighted attendees’ taste buds and ears. The self-taught chocolatier, named one of America’s finest chocolatiers by Forbes, has crafted luxury chocolate for the Grammys, Emmys, and Oscars, to name a few. His career has been a journey, beginning with a three-year study towards his PhD in flavor. First, his chocolate, now his book, For the Love of Chocolate, has taken him all over.

“I’m just grateful, one, to have been able to be inspired to write this book for the people who have helped me cultivate it, publish it, and then get it to the people. So now, I’m busy going from place to place. We’re here in Pass Christian today. I’ll be in Jackson, Mississippi, tomorrow for the Mississippi Book Festival on Saturday, and so I’m bouncing north, south, east, and west, talking about the book. It’s just been a really good time, I’m super pleased. The book came out officially on Tuesday, so I couldn’t be more grateful” said Ashley.

For the Love of Chocolate is more than a mere cookbook, it is a love letter, an embodiment of Ashley’s hard work, “It’s really a compilation of just the people, places, and experiences that I’ve had over the 15 some odd years that I’ve actually been working with chocolate and coming up with these different flavor combinations in chocolate. So literally each and every recipe represents one of the chocolates that I’ve made over time in some way. So if it’s a chocolate pancake with matcha syrup, you know, we have chocolates that embody that. So we didn’t want to make every item and every recipe a bonbon, but each of the bonbons that I’ve done over time is somehow represented in this book, but in a different format.”

If you love chocolate or even experimenting with new flavors in the kitchen, Phillip Ashley’s book is for you.

The powerhouse female Mississippian, Catherine Simone Gray, unleashed beautiful topics about the female body in relation to her book, Proud Flesh. The story explores the complexities of intimate partner violence and childbirth, how life manipulates the female body. Proud Flesh is an uproar, an addictive memoir, set in Mississippi.

When asked what it was like to bring a woman-led book concentrated with such strong, complex themes to Mississippi, Gray responded, “It means so much to me to tell this story from Mississippi. More than one in three women is a survivor of sexual trauma of some kind, and there’s so much in the experience of being in an abusive relationship, being in a situation of intimate partner violence that is not spoken, that is hidden. I was also in motherhood, experiencing that with my body, how much is not spoken, how much is hidden, how much you’re going through alone, and those were parallel experiences for me. So to be able to speak to the reality of a woman’s body and pregnancy and postpartum and the lasting impact on our tissues and our psyches means everything to me, to be able to tell that story from Mississippi.”

The author added, “I was writing this book when Roe v Wade was overturned and that brought even more purpose to sharing the realities of what it can be like to carry a child and to heal from childbirth, and i was thinking all of the women as well, who did not have a choice of whether they could make that decision for their body, and so i think, i hope as many people as possible will read this book and not shy away from the realities of the reproductive process and how intimate that is on so many levels for women.”

Gray has captivated over 2.5 million people through her work, from Proud Flesh to her blog “Unsilenced Woman.”  She is a force to be reckoned with. 

Mississippi native Chad Holley introduced his debut novel, Shield of Joyous, a coming-of-age story set in rural Mississippi in the 1980s, exploring themes like memory, mortality, childhood, and spiritual yearning. Holley shares the quaint story about how he found and used his mother-in-law’s sketches for the book’s cover. Through his book and his life, Holley has explored what it means to collaborate.

“I love it. I mean, I really enjoy the collaborative aspect of making art more and more. I mean, it’s unavoidably a solitary thing, it has to be, but it can also be more than that. I mean, my experience in bringing this book out has been that I needed other people to help it be what it needed to be, and she’s one of those people, so I’m very grateful for her.”

However, the collaboration of his passions has not always been simple. Earning his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a law degree in California, where, until recently, he served as a judicial attorney for the California Court of Appeals and now teaches law, “Well, balance, it’s not… That has been a challenge, I’m not going to lie. It’s also probably what my next book is going to be about, which is that challenge of walking through the world as an artist and a lawyer and how those things don’t seem like they need to necessarily conflict in theory, but my own personal experience has been, it’s kind of hard to do both well. But not impossible, but it’s a challenge.”

Holley has shown remarkable mastery in creating balance. Shield of Joyous is a masterpiece that is not only profoundly funny and moving but also exquisitely genuine, inspiring us to find joy and authenticity in every moment. The question is, when will his next proposed book premiere?

(Photos by Ezabelle Janssen/The Gazebo Gazette)