2022 Award Winners pictured above: (top left to right): Angie Thomas, Ashleigh Burke Coleman, Joshua Nguyen, Becky Hagenston, Teresa Nicholas, W. Ralph Eubanks, William R. Dunlap, Steve Rouse, Jennifer Torres, Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Kenneth Holditch, Scott Barretta, Bill Ellison, and Patrick O'Connor
Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award
The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is pleased to announce the recipients of the
2022 Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award
William Dunlap artist, writer, arts advocate and commentator Kenneth Holditch Tennessee Williams scholar, professor, essayist, lecturer
2022 Special Achievement Award to Patrick O'Connor for the documentary film Look Away, Look Away
2022 Citation of Merit
In recognition and appreciation for their years of contributing to Mississippi's creative community and for hosting two critically acclaimed and beloved MPB Think Radio music shows, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is pleased to present Citation of Merit Awards to MPB's Grassroots with Bill Ellison and MPB's Highway 61 with Scott Barretta
Category Awards
Fiction - Becky Hagenston for The Age of Discovery and Other Stories
Nonfiction - W. Ralph Eubanks for A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape
Life Writing - Teresa Nicholas for The Mama Chronicles
Poetry - Joshua Nguyen for Come Clean
Youth Literature - Angie Thomas for Concrete Rose
Music Composition (Contemporary) - Christone "Kingfish" Ingram for 662
Music Composition (Classical) - Steve Rouse for Where Beauty Persists
Photography - Ashleigh Burke Coleman for Hold Nothing Back
Visual Arts - Jennifer Torres for Garden Boats for Osage Park
2022 - 2021 - James Sclater, Clinton - Angels 2020 - Steve Rouse, Louisville, Kentucky – The Bird, the Bee, and the Bear
Fiction
2022 - 2021 - Odie Lindsey, Nashville, Tennessee - Some Go Home 2020 - Minrose Gwin, Albuquerque, New Mexico – The Accidentals
Nonfiction
2022 - 2021 - Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Princeton, New Jersey - Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own 2020 - Margaret McMullan, Pass Christian - Where the Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss, and Return