was held in Natchez February 19-21, 2009. This years theme was :
" Southern Women Writers: Saluting the Eudora Welty Centennial"
One of the most coveted awards given out each year is:
" The Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award"
This award was established in 1994 by the NL&CC to honor the internationally known author
Richard Wright. This man was born near Natchez in 1908, the son of a country school teacher and sharecropper. Wright's first novel, Native Son" was published in 1940 and was an immediate success. His " Black Boy", a fictionalized autobiography, was published in 1945 and sold 400,000 copies in three months. After leaving Natchez, Wright worked in Chicago and later moved to Paris, where he died in 1960.
Winners of the award are honored each year for a body of literary work. They must be outstanding, living writers with a strong Mississippi connection. Eudora Welty was the first recipient of this award in 1994 and a few of the others over the years are: Willie Morris, Shelby Foote,John Grisham, Barry Hannah, Greg Iles, Elizabeth Spencer.
This years winners are:
Carolyn Haines: A wonderful Southern Writer of Literary Fiction,
Summer of the Redeemer, Touched, Fever Moon, Penumbra, Revenant, Judas Burning,
non- fiction, My Mother's Witness,
& The Sarah Booth DelaneyMysteries Series,
Them Bones, Buried Bones, Splintered Bones, Crossed Bones, Hallowed Bones,
Bones To Pick, Ham Bones, Wish Bones
and coming in June 2009, Greedy Bones.
AND..................................
Natasha Tretheway: Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet:
Native Guard, Domestic Work & Bellocq's Ophelia
CONGRATULATIONS CAROLYN HAINES !!
& Natasha Tretheway!
I look forward to interviewing Carolyn later in June 2009
right here on The Writers Porch!
If you are not familiar with Carolyn's writing you
are missing out my friends!
The Bones Series is AWESOME !
It seems I'm all about Natchez this week, I wonderWHY ??
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