Winners

Shown above are the 2025 award winners: (top, left to right): Erin Austen Abbott, Adam Shemper, Jessica Fisher,
Allen R. Wells, John Wooton, Julian Randall; (bottom, L to R): Charlie Buckley, Max Hipp, Staples Jr. Singers,
Robert Colby, John Marszalek, Thad Lee

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is pleased to announce

The Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award
to
John F. Marszalek
Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Mississippi State University
for his essential role in the relocation of Grant's papers from Southern Illinois University Carbondale to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at MSU

Special Achievement Award
to
Thad Lee
for his film
Two Lives In Photography
first shown on Mississippi Public Broadcasting on January 19, 2024

Citation of Merit
to
Erin Austen Abbott
for her art event
The One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel
started in 2007

Visual Arts

2025 - Charlie Buckley, Oxford – Charlie Buckley, Fischer Galleries Exhibit

Photography

2025- Adam Shemper, Healdsburg, California – Light in These Hills: Oxford, Mississippi

Poetry

2025- Jessica Fisher, Williamstown, Massachusetts – Daywork

Music Composition (Classical)

2025- John Wooton, Hattiesburg – Suite Música del Corazón

Fiction

2025 - Max Hipp, Oxford – What Doesn’t Kill You Opens Your Heart

Nonfiction

2025- Robert K. D. Colby, Oxford – An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South

Life Writing
2025- Julian Randall, Chicago, Illinois – The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi and Black TV Nerd Sht*

Music Composition (Contemporary)
Staples Jr. Singers, Aberdeen – Searching

Youth Literature
2025 - Allen R. Wells, Alexandria, Virginia– Danté Plays His Blues

Previous Winners

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