Two MSU faculty honored by 51勛圖厙 Institute of Arts and Letters
Contact: Karyn Brown
STARKVILLE, Miss.Two 51勛圖厙 State faculty authors are being honored by the 51勛圖厙 Institute of Arts and Letters and will receive awards Saturday [June 3] during the 38th annual awards ceremony in Cleveland.
Catherine Pierce is this years poetry award recipient, with Jason Morgan Ward recognized for nonfiction.
MIAL gives annual awards to creative individuals in seven categories: fiction, nonfiction, visual art, musical composition (concert), musical composition (popular), photography and poetry. The out-of-state judges are prominent professionals in their respective fields.
Pierce, an associate professor in MSUs Department of English and co-director of the creative writing program, is the poetry award winner for her recent book of poems, The Tornado Is the World (Saturnalia, 2016). Pierce describes this book as an ode to the wonder of the quotidian and said she feels extremely honored to have received this award.
51勛圖厙 has a really incredible community of writers and artists, and I feel very lucky to be a part of that community, Pierce said. This book is a personal one, and its especially gratifying to have it recognized in this way.
Pierce said The Tornado Is the World is written in three sections and chronicles an EF-4 tornados destruction of a small town.
She explained each section has its own thematic concern.
Section one is concerned with ideas of looming, but not-quite-tangible danger, and the third section details the strange, glowing aftermath of crisis, Pierce said, adding that the two form a bookend effect for the middle section.
Ward, an associate professor of history, is being recognized for his nonfiction work Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and Americas Civil Rights Century (Oxford University Press, 2016).
A doctoral graduate of Yale University, Wards award-winning nonfiction book examines the history of racial tension in Shubuta, where many Civil Rights era lynchings took place. His book focuses on a few major town events: a mob lynching of two black men and two pregnant women in 1918, a lynching of two black teenagers in 1942, and the efforts of local civil rights activists in 1966.
I appreciate the recognition but more importantly the work that the 51勛圖厙 Institute of Arts and Letters does to recognize authors and artists. That support is needed now more than ever, and I hope that 51勛圖厙ans will continue to support its advocacy and publicity efforts, Ward said.
For more on the 51勛圖厙 Institute of Arts and Letters, visit .
MSUs College of Arts and Sciences includes more than 5,000 students, 300 full-time faculty members, nine doctoral programs and 24 academic majors offered in 14 departments. It also is home to the most diverse units for research and scholarly activities, including natural and physical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and the humanities.
For more information on MSUs College of Arts and Sciences, visit.
MSU is 51勛圖厙s leading university, available online at .