Shown above are the 2024 award winners: (top, left to right): Curtis Wilkie, A. H. Jerriod Avant, Bark (Tim & Susan Lee), Charles Reagan Wilson, Jesmyn Ward, Jennifer Drinkwater; (bottom, left to right): Kate Medley, Steve Rouse, Lee Durkee, Angie Thomas, and Stephen Coleman.

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The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is pleased to announce

 Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award
to 
Curtis Wilkie
​Oxford
distinguished journalist, author, and professor of journalism (UM)

&

Special Achievement Award 
to 
Dr. Stephen Coleman
Hattiesburg
photojournalist and professor (USM) for his tireless advocacy and volunteerism in the arts

 

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Visual Arts

2024 - Jennifer Drinkwater: The What’s Good Project by Jennifer Drinkwater, Ames, Iowa 

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Photography

2024 - Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South by Kate Medley, Durham, North Carolina

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Poetry

2024 - Muscadine by A. H. Jerriod Avant, Crenshaw, Mississippi

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Music Composition (Classical)

2024 - ​Flute Sonata by Steve Rouse, Louisville, Kentucky

Fiction

2024 - Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, DeLisle, Mississippi

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Nonfiction

2224 - The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South by Charles Reagan Wilson, Oxford, Mississippi



​Life Writing
2024 - Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, & My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint by Lee Durkee, Taylor, Mississippi

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Music Composition (Contemporary)

2024 - Loud/BARK (Tim & Susan Lee), Water Valley, Mississippi

Youth Literature
2024 - ​Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas, Atlanta, Georgia
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Previous Winners

Download the list of previous winners by clicking  on the link below.
​MIAL Previous Winners

Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. All rights reserved.