Winners

2022 Award Winners pictured above: (top row, left to right): Johnny Rawls, Coulter Fussell, Berkley Hudson, Linda Williams Jackson, Robert S. McElvaine, and Sarah Adlakha; (second row, left to right): David Rae Morris, Panny Flautt Mayfield, Steve Rouse, and Melissa Ginsburg

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023

Category Awards

Fiction – Midnight on the Marne by Sarah Adlakha, Ocean Springs

Nonfiction – The Times They Were a-Changin’ by Robert S. McElvaine, Clinton

Life Writing – O. N. Pruitt’s Possum Town by Berkley Hudson,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Poetry – Doll Apollo by Melissa Ginsburg, Oxford

Youth Literature – The Lucky Ones by Linda Williams Jackson, Southaven

Music Composition (Contemporary) – Going Back to Mississippi by Johnny Rawls, Purvis

Music Composition (Classical) – Quadrabonix by Steve Rouse,
Louisville, Kentucky

Photography – Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father by David Rae Morris, New Orleans, Louisiana

Visual Arts – My Love for You Is Deathless by Coulter Fussell, Water Valley

Special Achievement Award
to
Tupelo Reads
a collaborative effort by the Lee County Library, City of Tupelo, Reeds Gumtree Bookstore, Tupelo High School, Boys and Girls Clubs, and interested citizens to promote literacy and lifelong learning.

Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award
to
Panny Flautt Mayfield
Clarksdale
for her extensive support of arts and letters in Mississippi. Mayfield is an award-winning journalist who has photographed and written about blues and gospel music, playwright Tennessee Williams, and Delta life for decades. She is also the founding director of the Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Literary Festival.

Visual Arts

2022 - Jennifer Torres, Hattiesburg - Garden Boats for Osage Park
2021 - Cathy Hegman, Holly Bluff - Pandemic Perceptions
2020 - Stacey Johnson, Pass Christian – Storytellers

Photography

2022 - Ashleigh Burke Coleman, Ackerman - Hold Nothing Back
2021 - Andrea Morales, Oxford - Roll Down Like Water
2020 - Will Jacks, Cleveland – Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint

Poetry

2022 - Joshua Nguyen, Oxford - Come Clean
2021- Catherine Pierce, Starkville - Danger Days
2020 - C. T. Salazar, Caledonia – This Might Have Meant Fire

Music Composition (Classical)

2022 - Steve Rouse, Louisville, Kentucky - Where Beauty Persists
2021 - James Sclater, Clinton - Angels
2020 - Steve Rouse, Louisville, Kentucky – The Bird, the Bee, and the Bear

Fiction

2022 - Becky Hagenston, Starkville - The Age of Discovery and Other Stories
2021 - Odie Lindsey, Nashville, Tennessee - Some Go Home
2020 - Minrose Gwin, Albuquerque, New Mexico – The Accidentals

Nonfiction

2022 - W. Ralph Eubanks, Washington, D.C. - A Place Like Mississippi: A Journal Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape
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

Life Writing
2022 - Teresa Nicholas, Jackson - The Mama Chronicles: A Memoir

Music Composition (Contemporary)

2022 - Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Clarksdale - 662
2021 - Steve Azar, Greenville - My Mississippi Reunion
2020 - Bark (Susan and Tim Lee), Knoxville, Tennessee - Terminal Everything

Youth Literature
2022 - Angie Thomas, Ridgeland - Concrete Rose
2021 - Deborah Wiles, Tucker, Georgia - Kent State
2020 - Angie Thomas, Ridgeland - On the Come Up

Previous Winners

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