Mississippi Book Festival : A Literary Lawn Party

Official Panelists

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Sarah Adlakha

Sarah Adlakha is a native of Chicago who now lives along the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her husband, three daughters, two horses, and one dog. She started writing fiction shortly after retiring from her psychiatry practice. Her debut novel, She Wouldn’t Change a Thing, was a CNN...

Kendra Allen

Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, TX. She is the recipient of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection, When You Learn the Alphabet, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She has been featured on C-SPAN, interviewed in The Rumpus and in...

John Anderson

John Anderson is the youngest child of famed artist Walter Anderson and Agnes Anderson. Anderson, the family curator, grew up in the artistic retreat at Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, MS. For the past several years, Anderson has been the curator or co-curator of over twelve exhibits of his father�...

Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours and one work of non-fiction, I Came All This Way To Meet You. She has contributed essays to...

Andrew Aydin

Andrew is creator and co-author of the graphic memoir series, MARCH, which chronicles the life of Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. Co-authored with Rep. Lewis and illustrated by Nate Powell, MARCH is the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award. In 2019,...

Jack Bales

Jack Bales retired in August 2020 as Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus after working for more than forty years at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Although a librarian by vocation, he is a writer by avocation and has published books as well as numerous ...

Mark Barr

Mark Barr's fiction and essays have appeared in Garden & Gun, Wisconsin Review, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), received favorable reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and was awarded the 2019 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction, the 2019 Writers' League...

Scott Barretta

Scott Barretta, a resident of Greenwood, is a writer/researcher for the Mississippi Blues Trail, the host of Highway 61 on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and teaches sociology courses about music and popular culture at the University of Mississippi. He's the former editor and and continuing contributor to...

Vishwesh Bhatt

A native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, Vishwesh Bhatt has made his home in Oxford, Mississippi, for more than twenty years. As the executive chef of Snackbar, where he has cooked for the last twelve years, he was nominated for People's Best New Chef by Food & Wine and won the 2019 James...

Scott Billington

From the 1980s through the early 2000s, a golden era for southern roots music, producer and three-time Grammy winner Scott Billington recorded many of the period's most iconic artists. Working primarily in Louisiana, Billington produced such giants as Irma Thomas, Charlie Rich, Buckwheat Zydeco, Johnny Adams, Bobby Rush, Ruth Brown,...

Katie Blount

Katie Blount became director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History February 1, 2015. Blount began her career at MDAH in 1994 in the public information section. She went on to serve as deputy director for communication, overseeing the department’s strategic planning process and working with the team that planned the...

Matt Bondurant

Matt Bondurant's latest novel Oleander City will be in book stores nationwide June 14, 2022. His previous novels include The Night Swimmer, which was featured in the New York Times Book Review, Outside Magazine, and The Daily Beast, among others. His...

Jason Bouldin

Jason Bouldin began his professional career as a painter in 1991 after a two-year apprenticeship with his father, the esteemed Mississippi portrait painter, Marshall Bouldin. Bouldin’s commissioned portraits hang in such varied locations as the United States Department of Agriculture, Harvard University, Tulane University Law School, the Mississippi State Capitol,...

Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, ...

Taylor Brown

Taylor Brown grew up on the Georgia coast. He has lived in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and the mountains of western North Carolina. He is the recipient of the Montana Prize in Fiction and a three-time finalist for the Southern Book Prize. His novels include ...

Rinker Buck

Rinker Buck began his career in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle and was a longtime staff writer for the Hartford Courant. He has written for Vanity Fair, New York, Life, and many other publications, and his work has won the PEN New England Award, the...

Lonnie G. Bunch III

Historian, author, curator, and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, who was appointed in June 2019. Prior to assuming this position, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American...

Historian, author, curator, and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the 14^th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, who was appointed in June 2019.

Prior to assuming this position, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In this position he provided strategic leadership in areas of scholarship, collections, fundraising and academic and cultural partnerships.

As a public historian, a scholar who brings history to the people, Bunch has spent nearly 30 years in the museum field and is one of the nation’s leading figures in the historical and museum community.

Prior to his July 2005 appointment as director of NMAAHC, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history.

Bunch has held several positions at the Smithsonian, and spent a number of years at both the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum.

A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from slavery, the black military experience, the American presidency, and all black towns in the American west to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums.

In service to the historical and cultural community, Bunch has served on the advisory boards of several professional organizations. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Commission for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Bunch has received honorary doctorates from an array of Universities including: Harvard University, Princeton University, Brown University, Dominican University, Roosevelt University, Rutgers University, Northwestern University, and Georgetown University.

Born in the Newark, N.J. area, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions across the country including American University; the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; and The George Washington University. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from American University in African American and American history.

He is married to Maria Marable Bunch, a museum educator. They have two daughters, Sarah and Katie.

Kelly Butler

Kelly Butler is the Barksdale Reading Institutes’s Chief Executive Officer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in special education from the University of Alabama and a master’s degree in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University. Prior to joining BRI, Kelly served as a teacher in the...

Jimmy Cajoleas

Jimmy Cajoleas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi and is the author of five novels for children and young adults. He now lives in New York.

Tracy Carr

Tracy Carr is the Mississippi Center for the Book Director and the Library Services Director at the Mississippi Library Commission.

Matthew Casey

Matthew Casey is Associate Professor of History and Director of the School of Humanities at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the author of Empire's Guest Workers: Haitian Migrants in Cuba during the Age of US Occupation, as well as numerous articles on Caribbean history. He lives in Hattiesburg...

Brian Castner

Brian Castner is a nonfiction writer, former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, and veteran of the Iraq War. His most recent book is Stampede, a new history of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. He is also the bestselling author of Disappointment River, All the Ways We Kill and Die<...

Tom Clavin

Tom Clavin is a bestselling author of 18 nonfiction books on American and military history, sports, and entertainment. He previously worked as a newspaper editor and reporter, including for the New York Times for 15 years, and as a writer for such magazines as Smithsonian and Men's...

Adam Clay

Adam Clay is the author of To Make Room for the Sea (Milkweed Editions, 2020), Stranger (Milkweed Editions, 2016), A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012), and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A fifth book of poems, Circle Back,...

Dhonielle Clayton

Dhonielle Clayton is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Belles series and the co-author of the Tiny Pretty Things duology, which is now a Netflix original series. She hails from the Washington, D.C. suburbs on the Maryland side. She taught...

Lesa Cline-Ransome

Lesa Cline-Ransome is the award-winning author of many critically acclaimed books for young readers, including Not Playing By the Rules: 21 Female Athletes Who Changed Sports, Young Pele: Soccer's First Star, Before She was Harriet, Overground Railroad, and Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams....

Michael Cormack

Dr. Michael Cormack is the Deputy Superintendent for Jackson Public Schools. In this role, he develops and executes the district's new strategic plan Excellence of All. Prior to his work in JPS, Michael served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Barksdale Reading Institute, a statewide organization dedicated to improving...

Eli Cranor

Eli Cranor played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional, and then coached high school football for five years. These days, he's traded in the pigskin for a laptop, writing from Arkansas where he lives with his wife and kids. His fiction has won The Greensboro Review's Robert Watson Literary...

David Crews

David Crews is the Clerk of Court for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Mississippi. He is a former United States Marshal who spent 12 years with the U.S. Justice Department before joining the Court. In 1982 David worked with Governor William Winter and others...

James R. Crockett

Jim Crockett is Professor Emeritus of Accountancy at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), and an Adjunct Professor of Accountancy at The University of Mississippi. He earned the BBA and MBA degrees from the University of Mississippi and the DBA from Mississippi State University. Dr. Crockett has served on the...

Susan Annah Currie

When she was six years old, Susan Annah Currie spent fifteen months as a patient in the Preventorium Hospital in Magee, Mississippi, where children were allowed visits from parents only twice a month, and adhered to a strict daily routine, called "the Fresh Air Method". Susan is...

Andy Davidson

Andy Davidson is the Bram Stoker Award nominated author of In the Valley of the Sun, The Boatman's Daughter, and The Hollow Kind. He holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi. Born and raised in Arkansas, he makes his home in Georgia...

Patrick Dean

Patrick Dean writes on the outdoors, outdoor athletes, and the environment. He has worked as a teacher, a political media director, and is presently the executive director of a rail-trail nonprofit. An avid trail-runner, paddler, and mountain-biker, he lives with his wife and dogs on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee.

Matt de la Peña

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times Bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and six picture books (including Milo Imagines the World and Last Stop on...

David J. Dennis, Jr.

David J. Dennis Jr. is a senior writer at The Undefeated. His work has been featured in Atlanta magazine, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, among other publications. Dennis is the recipient of the 2021 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, is a National Association of Black Journalist...

David J. Dennis, Sr.

David J. Dennis, Sr. is a civil rights veteran and one of the original Freedom Riders who rode from Montgomery to Jackson in 1961. He served as field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations and helped organize the Freedom Summer in 1964. He...

Ryan N. Dennis

Ryan N. Dennis is the chief curator and artistic director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Ryan previously served as the Curator and Programs Director at Project Row Houses where her work focused on African American contemporary art with...

Daniel de Visé

Daniel de Visé is the author of the critically acclaimed Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show and The Comeback: Greg LeMond, The True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France,...

James Dickson

James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, MS. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and...

Alda P. Dobbs

Alda P. Dobbs is the author of the historical novels Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna and its followup, The Other Side of the River (September 2022). Her debut novel received a Pura Belpre Honor and is a Texas Bluebonnet Master List selection. Alda was born in a...

Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of fourteen books. His most recent is A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes, which received a number of accolades, including being chosen by the Washington Post as one of 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020, by Kirkus Reviews...

Todd Doughty

Todd Doughty is currently SVP, Publicity and Communications, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and has worked at Penguin Random House for more than two decades. A graduate of Southern Illinois University (Carbondale) and former bookseller, he lives with his partner in Westchester County, New York.

David M. Drucker

David M. Drucker is the author of In Trump's Shadow; The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP (October 2021; Twelve Books) and a senior correspondent for the Washington Examiner, where he focuses on Congress, campaigns and national political trends. Prior to joining the Washington...

William Dunlap

Allegory is ever-present in the work of William Dunlap, an artist and writer who refers to what he does as "hypothetical realism." "The places I paint and the people I write about aren't real... but they could be." He is the recipient of international fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and...

Saddiq Dzukogi

Saddiq Dzukogi's poetry collection Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) was named one of the 29 best poetry collections by Oprah Daily. His chapbook Inside the Flower Room was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His...

John T. Edge

John T Edge, who lives and works in Oxford, has written or edited more than a dozen books including The Potlikker Papers. A history of the modern South, told through food, the book was named to more than a dozen "best book of the year" lists. Edge teaches...

Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz...

Helen Ellis

Helen Ellis is the author of Southern Lady Code, American Housewife and Eating the Cheshire Cat. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @WhatIDoAllDay and Instagram @American Housewife. Photo by Lara Magzan Photography

W. Ralph Eubanks

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape (Timber Press, March 2021). A native of Mount Olive, Mississippi, he is the author of two other books: Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s...

David Wright Faladé

David Wright Faladé is a professor of English at the University of Illinois and the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is the co-author of the young adult novel Away Running and...

Jennifer Fawcett

Jennifer Fawcett grew up in rural Eastern Ontario and spent many years in Canada making theatre before coming to the United States. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the...

Andrew Feiler

Andrew Feiler is a fifth generation Georgian. Having grown up Jewish in Savannah, he has been shaped by the rich complexities of the American South. Andrew has long been active in civic life. He has helped create over a dozen community initiatives, serves on multiple not-for-profit boards, and is an...

Beth Ann Fennelly

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, is the former poet laureate of Mississippi and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She’s won grants and awards from the N.E.A., the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil....

Marcie Cohen Ferris

Marcie Cohen Ferris, author of The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region and Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, is professor emerita of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel...

William R. Ferris

William Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-2001), Ferris has written or edited 16 books and created 15 documentary films. He co-edited with Charles Wilson the Encyclopedia...

Tim Fielder

Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of Visual Afrofuturism, Pulp entertainment, and action films. He is known for his graphic novel series, Matty's Rocket, and his TEDx Talk on Afrofuturism....

Josh Foreman

Josh Foreman is from Jackson, Mississippi. His second home is Seoul, South Korea, where he lived, taught, and traveled from 2005 to 2014. He holds degrees from Mississippi State University and the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Starkville, Mississippi, with his wife, Melissa, and his three...

Ke Francis

Ke Francis is a narrative artist who has been actively producing artwork for more than forty years. He and his wife Mary are the co-owners of HOOPSNAKE PRESS, a fine art press that publishes artist books and prints. His book works, paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures are in over thirty...

Tom Franklin

Tom Franklin is the New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and ...

X.M. “Mike" Frascogna Jr.

X.M. "Mike" Frascogna Jr. has nearly fifty years experience as a practicing attorney, negotiator, and professor. His experience ranges from multi-national litigation and FBI hostage negotiation, to deep experience in the fields of entertainment and sports. He is a prolific writer and has published a number of books on...

Olivia Clare Friedman

Olivia Clare Friedman is the author of the story collection Disasters in the First World, the poetry collection The 26-Hour Day, and the novel Here Lies. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Granta, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern<...

Susan Garrard

Susan Garrard has been President and CEO of the Mississippi Children's Museum since 2008 and was responsible for successfully completing and administering a $26.6 million capital campaign that realized the dream of an award-winning children's museum in Jackson, Mississippi. Under her leadership, the museum has received many accolades...

Ellen Gilchrist

Winner of the 1984 National Book Award for Fiction for her collection of short stories, Victory Over Japan, Ellen Gilchrist has been declared “a national treasure” by the Washington Post for her various works, which at present constitute a collection of twenty-three books. She has received numerous other awards for her...

Melissa Ginsburg

Melissa Ginsburg is author of the poetry collections Doll Apollo and Dear Weather Ghost, the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, and three poetry chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Guernica, Image, West Branch, and many other magazines. She teaches...

Kathleen Glasgow

Kathleen Glasgow is the New York Times bestselling author of books for young adults, including Girl in Pieces, You'd Be Home Now, and How to Make Friends With the Dark. Her latest book is The Agathas, a young adult mystery cowritten with...

Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. He is the former president of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization of scholars of religion in the world....

Chris Goodwin

Chris Goodwin is host of the Speaking of Mississippi podcast and the History Is Lunch lecture series for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Aram Goudsouzian

Aram Goudsouzian is the Bizot Family Professor of History at the University of Memphis, where he teaches courses on modern American history, with a particular focus on race, politics, and culture. He is the author of five books, including biographies of the actor Sidney Poitier and ...

torrin a. greathouse

Torrin A. Greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist. Her work is published in POETRY, the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. She was a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her debut collection Wound from the ...

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies and Matrix, and the short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She...

Jeff Guinn

Jeff Guinn is the bestselling author of numerous books, including Go Down Together, The Last Gunfight, Manson, and The Road to Jonestown. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

Becky Hagenston

Becky Hagenston is the author of four award-winning story collections: The Age of Discovery and Other Stories, Scavengers, Strange Weather, and A Gram of Mars. Her work has been chosen for a Pushcart Prize and twice for an O. Henry Award. She is a professor of...

Matt Haines

Matt Haines tried to eat as many different versions of king cake that he could during the 2017 Mardi Gras season, and ended up sampling over 80 different varieties. That was just before he hiked the entire Appalachian trail. When he returned to New Orleans from this amazing feat he began his...

Shaun Hamill

Shaun Hamill received his BA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington and his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first novel, A Cosmology of Monsters, was released in 2019 and was a finalist for "Best Horror Novel" in the Goodreads Choice Awards. His second novel,...

Clara Hammett

Clara Hammett holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is from Jackson, Mississippi and is a former bookseller at Lemuria Books. She is a reporter and writes for Cynsations, a website that celebrates children's literature started by author Cynthia Leitich...

Gwendolyn Harmon

Mississippi native Gwen Harmon is a Jackson State University alumnae, spent 15 years as the Director of Marketing and Governmental Affairs with the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis; in management positions with United Airlines (Chicago, IL) Federal Express (Memphis, TN) and the US Department of Commerce ...

Gregg Harper

First elected to Congress in 2009, Gregg served five terms representing Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District. During his time in Congress, he served as a member of the influential House Committee on Energy and Commerce which has jurisdiction over a broad swath of the economy including healthcare, energy, transportation, and telecommunications....

Lee Harper

Maker of small things in Oxford, MS

Steve Hayes

Steve Hayes is the CEO, co-founder, and editor of The Dispatch podcast. He is also the author of two New York Times best sellers and an NBC News Political Analyst.

Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter living in New York City. He is the author of Horrorstor, My Best Friend's Exorcism (which is being adapted into a feature film by Amazon Studios), We Sold Our Souls, and the New York...

Sarah Heying

Sarah Heying is a PhD candidate in English and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, where they research lesbian and trans literature that invokes the site of the U.S. South to negotiate the intersections between gender, sexuality, race, and legacies of dispossession. Their short story, "The Chair Kickers'...

Ladee Hubbard

Ladee Hubbard is the author of The Rib King and The Talented Ribkins, which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, ...

Berkley Hudson

Berkley Hudson is emeritus associate professor of media history at the Missouri School of Journalism of the University of Missouri. For twenty-five years, including at the Los Angeles Times, he worked as a journalist. The National Endowment for Humanities awarded Hudson two grants for a traveling exhibit of...

Laird Hunt

Laird Hunt is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and two book-length translations from the French. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, and Italy's Bridge prize....

Linda Williams Jackson

Linda Williams Jackson is the author of Midnight Without a Moon, which was an American Library Association Notable Children's Book, a Jane Addams Honor Book for Peace and Social Justice, and a Washington Post Summer Book Club Selection. Her second book, A Sky Full of...

Tiffany D. Jackson

Tiffany D. Jackson is the NYT Bestselling author of YA novels including the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning Monday’s Not Coming, the NAACP Image Award-nominated Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, Grown, and her forthcoming 2021 titles Blackout, White Smoke, and ...

Morgan Jerkins

Morgan Jerkins is the author of Wandering in Strange Lands and the New York Times bestseller This Will Be My Undoing and a Senior Culture Editor at ESPN's The Undefeated. Jerkins is a visiting professor at Columbia University and a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader in...

Sadeqa Johnson

Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels. Her accolades include the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the USA Best Book Award for Best Fiction. She is a Kimbilio Fellow, former board member of the James River Writers, and a Tall Poppy Writer. Originally...

Chris Joyner

Chris Joyner is an investigative reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution with more than two decades of experience in journalism, ranging from community newspapers to national and international news and wire services. He reported from the scene of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill...

Pamela D.C. Junior

Motivational speaker, historian, and women's activist, Pamela D.C. Junior is a native of Jackson, Mississippi and earned a B.S. in Education with a minor in Special Education from Jackson State University. Pamela is the newly appointed director of the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi. As former manager...

Harrison Scott Key

Harrison Scott Key is the author of two books: Congratulations, Who Are You Again? and The World's Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has spoken at TEDx and hundreds of book festivals, conferences, and universities around the nation....

Robert Khayat

Robert Khayat is Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Mississippi. As a student at Ole Miss, he was a two-time All-SEC baseball player. He was selected as an Academic All American football player and he led the nation in scoring among all college kickers. He played in the National Football...

Juhea Kim

Juhea Kim is a writer, artist, and advocate based in Portland, Oregon. Her bestselling debut novel Beasts of a Little Land was named a Best Book of 2021 by Harper's Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms., and Portland Monthly. It will be published around...

James Kirchick

James Kirchick has written about human rights, politics, and culture from around the world. A columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, he is the author of The End...

Alan Lange

Alan Lange is the Publisher of Y'all Politics, Mississippi's most recognized political news organization. In 2009, he co-authored Kings of Tort which was published by Pediment Publishing and documented the largest judicial bribery scandal in Mississippi history involving tort barons Dickie Scruggs and Paul Minor.

Holly Lange

Holly Lange is a founder and the former Executive Director of the Mississippi Book Festival. Reading Victory over Japan launched Holly's love for Ellen Gilchrist and the festival has given them a friendship for the ages.

Kiese Laymon

Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon, Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing and the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America<...

William Lester

William Lester was born in Collierville, TN in 1948. After graduating from Murrah High Schoolin Jackson, MS, he attended the University of Mississippi and graduated with a BS in business and an MFA in Sculpture. His teaching career was at Delta State University where he taught in the Art...

Beverly Lowry

Beverly Lowry is the author of six novels and four previous works of nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Mississippi Review, Granta, and many other publications. She has received awards from the National...

Robert E. Luckett, Jr.

Robby Luckett received his BA in political science from Yale University and his PhD in history from the University of Georgia. A native Mississippian, he returned home, where he is a tenured Professor of History and Director of the Margaret Walker Center and COFO Civil Rights Education Center at Jackson...

Ebony Lumumba

Ebony Lumumba is an associate professor of English at Jackson State University and serves as department chair. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Mississippi a Master of Arts in English from Georgia State University and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman College with a...

Jenn Lyons

Jenn Lyons was a graphic artist and illustrator for 20 years before working as a video game producer on projects ranging from indie projects and slot-machine games to AAA titles for EA. In 2020, she was nominated for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her five-book Chorus of Dragons...

Julie Hines Mabus

Julie Hines Mabus is a fifth-generation Mississippian, educated at the University of Mississippi, majoring in mathematics, and at Columbia University with an MBA in finance. She practiced as a CPA over the years in Jackson and San Francisco. She is the mother of two beautiful and ...

David Magee

David Magee is the bestselling author of Dear William: A Father's Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, Love and Loss, a Publisher's Weekly national bestseller, and other books including How Toyota Became #1 (Penguin), a bestseller in India, and an award-winning columnist, and TEDx speaker. David has...

Bethany Mangle

Bethany Mangle is the author of Prepped and All the Right Reasons. She was born in Korea and raised in New Jersey in a household full of books, sheet music, and dog hair. She currently lives and writes in Mississippi. Visit her at BethanyMangle.com.

Mesha Maren

Mesha Maren is the author of the novels Sugar Run and Perpetual West (Algonquin Books). Her short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Crazyhorse, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Sou'wester, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper...

Jonathan Martin

Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for CNN and the co-author of the New York Times best-seller, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future. He joined the ...

Kevin Maurer

Kevin Maurer is an award-winning journalist and three-time New York Times bestselling co-author of No Easy Day, No Hero and American Radical among others. For the last eleven years, Maurer has also worked as a freelance writer covering war, politics and general interest...

Angela May

Angela May is the founder of May Media and PR and a former award-winning television news journalist who helps promote great books and share important community stories as a media specialist. She has been working with Mary Alice Monroe for more than a decade. The Islanders series are...

Robert S. McElvaine

Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters and Professor of History at Millsaps College. He is the author of eight books, including Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the 'Forgotten Man', The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941, Mario Cuomo: A...

C. Liegh McInnis

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, and retired English instructor at Jackson State University, the former editor/publisher of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches<...

Chris McLaughlin

Chris McLaughlin is founder and executive director of the Animal Rescue Front. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston with a BA in earth sciences, she lives in Massachusetts with two cats. This is her first book.

Leslie-Burl McLemore

Dr. Leslie-Burl McLemore is a Mississippi activist who sparked a boycott of his high school in 1960, demanding that the school library include books about black history. He has played a variety of roles as an activist serving the people of Mississippi and the nation in many capacities. Over the course...

Margaret McMullan

Margaret McMullan is the author of nine award-winning books including the novel, In My Mother’s House, the story collection Aftermath Lounge, and the anthology, Every Father’s Daughter. Her young adult novels How I Found the Strong, When I Crossed No-Bob,...

Candice Millard

Candice Millard is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic. Her book Hero of the Empire was named Amazon's number one history book of 2016. She lives in Kansas City with her husband...

Mary Miller

Mary Miller is the author of two short story collections and two novels, most recently Biloxi: A Novel (Liveright 2019). Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, the Oxford American, Pushcart Prize XLIV, and many others. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers...

Jerry Mitchell

The stories of Clarion-Ledger investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell have helped put four Klansmen and a suspected serial killer behind bars. His stories have also exposed injustices and corruption in Mississippi, helping lead to investigations, exonerations, firings and reforms of state agencies. A winner of a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant and more...

David Rae Morris

David Rae Morris was born in Oxford, England and grew up in New York City. He holds a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, in 1982, and an M.A. In Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota in 1991. His photographs and films have been published, exhibited...

JoAnne Prichard Morris

JoAnne Prichard Morris is a Mississippi native born in Indianola in 1944. She is a graduate of the University of Mississippi and did graduate work in folklore and Southern culture at Western Kentucky University. In 1967 she was teaching high school in Yazoo City when she met Willie Morris. She worked as...

Michael Morris

Michael Morris is the director of public engagement at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, where he has worked since 2016. Previously, Morris worked at the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute on Citizenship and Democracy and the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University (JSU). He earned his BA in history...

Marissa R. Moss

An award-winning journalist, Marissa R. Moss has written about the topic of gender inequality on the country airwaves for outlets like Rolling Stone, NPR, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and many more. Moss was the 2018 recipient of the Rolling Stone Chet Flippo Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism, and...

Erin Napier

Erin Napier is an artist, author, designer and entrepreneur with a fine arts degree who started her career in corporate graphic design before founding her own international stationery company, Lucky Luxe, and is a founding co-owner of Laurel Mercantile Co. Six days after meeting in college, Erin and Ben decided...

Brittney Newell

Brittney Newell is originally from Lucedale, MS but now lives in Meridian, MS with her husband, Dalton, and their three children, Elliot, Kipton, and Hollis. She graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from The University of Southern Mississippi. Brittney has been teaching for 8 years and...

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, finalist for the Kirkus Prize in non-fiction, and recently named the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. She is also the author of four books of...

Joshua Nguyen

Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press), winner of the 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook, "American Lục Bát for My Mother" (Bull City Press, 2021). He is a Vietnamese-American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a...

Carmen Oliver

Carmen Oliver is the author of many award-winning picture books for children including A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, Building an Orchestra of Hope: How Favio Chavez Taught Children to Make Music...

January Gill O'Neil

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and currently serves on the boards...

Casey Parks

Casey Parks is a reporter for The Washington Post who covers gender and family issues. She was previously a staff reporter at the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press and spent a decade at The Oregonian, where she wrote about race and LGBTQ+ issues and was a...

Dr. Ruth W. Patterson

Dr. Ruth W. Patterson is a pediatrician in Jackson, Mississippi and is affiliated with University of Mississippi Medical Center. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years.

Imani Perry

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Perry is the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation. She is also the author of Breathe<...

Mary Laura Philpott

Mary Laura Philpott, author of the national bestseller I Miss You When I Blink, writes essays that examine the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured frequently by The New York Times and appears in such outlets as ...

Catherine Pierce

Catherine Pierce is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Each of her last three books received the Mississippi Institute...

Ty Pinkins

Ty Pinkins is truly a "son of the Mississippi Delta." Born and raised in the small town of Rolling Fork, he is a former Communications Aide to President Barack Obama, and the author of 23 Miles & Running: My American Journey from Chopping Cotton in the Mississippi Delta to Sleeping in the...

Nate Powell

Nate Powell is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. His work includes the new graphic memoir/essay Save It For Later, Ozark horror tale Come Again, civil rights icon John Lewis' March trilogy and its follow-up Run, ...

Ben Raines

Ben Raines is an award-winning environmental journalist, filmmaker, and charter captain. He lives with his wife in Fairhope, Alabama.

Marshall Ramsey

Marshall Ramsey, a nationally recognized editorial cartoonist, shares his cartoons and travels the state as Mississippi Today’s Editor-At-Large. Marshall can often be found in communities across Mississippi, promoting public conversations about the news and inspiring audiences to engage in civic life. He’s also host of a...

Julian Rankin

Julian Rankin was raised in Mississippi and North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rankin was the founding Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art, and now serves as Executive Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of...

James Ransome

The Children's Book Council named James E. Ransome as one of seventy-five authors and illustrators everyone should know. An award-winning illustrator of over sixty books, he received the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustrations for his book, The Creation and has received several Coretta Scott Honors for many...

Lauren Rhoades

Lauren Rhoades is an essayist, memoirist and the director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission. Previously, she was the director of the Eudora Welty House & Garden. She earned an MFA from the Mississippi University for Women.

Lyn Roberts

Lyn Roberts has been a bookseller at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi since 1988. Sometime after that she became the general manager of what is now four stores on five floors in three buildings on Oxford's town square in the center of town. She lives in Taylor with her husband Douglas.

Steve Robertson

Steve Robertson is a native of Columbia, Mississippi and a resident of Starkville. Robertson has penned five books: Flim Flam, Stark Villains, Alpha Dawgs, Blooms of Oleander and, his latest, Dawg Pile. Dawg Pile chronicles Mississippi State's 2021 national championship season that...

Stuart Rockoff

Stuart Rockoff received his Ph.D. in US history from the University of Texas at Austin with a special emphasis on immigration and American Jewish history. He has taught several history courses in American and ethnic history at such schools as the University of Texas and Millsaps College and has...

Ellen Hunter Ruffin

Ellen Hunter Ruffin, associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has been curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection since 2006. She has served on the Newbery Medal Committee, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and the Schneider Family Book Award. She also serves as an administrator of the Ezra...

C.T. Salazar

C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking now available from Acre Books. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021). He’s the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi...

Sid Salter

Sidney L. "Sid" Salter is Chief Communications Officer and Director of the Office of Public Affairs at Mississippi State University. He is also the university's spokesman and the administrator of both the University Television Center and campus radio station WMSV-FM. He has enjoyed a unique career as...

James M. Scott

James M. Scott is the author, most recently, of Rampage and Target Tokyo, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina. http://www.jamesmscott.com/

Jodi Skipper

Jodi Skipper is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Her research seeks to understand how historic preservation projects might play a role in imagining more sustainable and healthy futures for U.S. southern communities. During her time at the University of Mississippi, she...

Brendan Slocumb

Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than twenty years he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras...

Katy Simpson Smith

Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835<...

Carlie Sorosiak

Carlie Sorosiak is the author of the novels I, Cosmo and Leonard (My Life as a Cat), as well as the picture books Everywhere with You, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth, and Books Aren't for Eating, illustrated by Manu Montoya. She lives in Georgia with...

Stuart Stevens

Stuart Stevens is the author of seven previous books, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including Northern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five...

Katherine St. John

Katherine St. John is a native of Mississippi and a graduate of the University of Southern California who spent over a decade in the film industry as an actress, screenwriter, and director before turning to penning novels. When she’s not writing, she can be found hiking or on the...

Robert St. John

Robert St. John is the author of eleven books and owns the Crescent City Grill, Mahogany Bar, Tabella, Ed's Burger Joint, The Midtowner, and El Rayo Tex-Mex in Hattiesburg Mississippi. For twenty years, St. John has written a weekly syndicated newspaper column and has been named Mississippi's top chef numerous...

Nic Stone

Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, GA, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to...

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University, and the author of Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith A. Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. A native of Harlem, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Anthony Thaxton

Anthony Thaxton has won awards as a painter, an educator, and a television producer and filmmaker. He produced the acclaimed documentary Walter Anderson: The Extraordinary Life and Art of The Islander with Robert St John and wrote/designed the companion book. Anthony's vibrant paintings have been featured on television and...

Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi, as indicated by her accent. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and an unofficial degree in Hip Hop....

Sami Thomason-Fyke

Sami Thomason-Fyke (she/her) is a Youth Services Specialist at the Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library. She was formerly a bookseller, events coordinator, and social media coordinator at Square Books in Oxford, MS. You can keep up with her reading recommendations at samisaysread.com. @SamiSaysRead

Adam Trest

Adam Trest is a fine artist and illustrator who has appeared on HGTV’s HomeTown with custom surface design collaborations. Raised in the South, Adam is inspired by the deep-rooted traditions found in southern culture and his imagery is heavily influenced by flora and fauna of the southeastern...

Michael W. Twitty

Michael W. Twitty is the author of The Cooking Gene, winner of the James Beard Foundation Book of the Year Award. He is a highly sought after speaker and consultant at food events and festivals, and a member of two Jewish speaker's bureaus. He has...

Alice Walker

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet, and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. For her seminal work The Color Purple, Ms. Walker won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer...

Wyatt Waters

Renowned watercolorist Wyatt Waters works solely on location. His philosophy is “if it is interesting to see, it can be a painting.” This approach has led to the printing of seven successful solo books and four collaborative publications with Mississippi restauranteur Robert St. John. Waters, along with St. John, can...

Lawrence Wells

Lawrence Wells, author of In Faulkner’s Shadow, is the director of Yoknapatawpha Press in Oxford, Mississippi, which he established with his late wife Dean Faulkner Wells. Wells cofounded the quarterly literary journal The Faulkner Newsletter and Yoknapatawpha Review. Author of two historical novels, ...

Claire Whitehurst

Claire Whitehurst (b. 1991, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a painter, printmaker and ceramicist based in Jackson, MS. Claire received her BFA from the University of Mississippi in 2015, her Post Baccalaureate from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Iowa in 2020. In 2018,...

Curtis Wilkie

Curtis Wilkie covered civil rights activity in Mississippi in the 1960s and afterward served as a national and international correspondent for a quarter century at the Boston Globe. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Antoine Wilson

Antoine Wilson is the author of the novels Mouth to Mouth, Panorama City, and The Interloper. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications. He is a contributing editor at the literary magazine ...

Ashley Woodfolk

Ashley Woodfolk has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She graduated from Rutgers University and worked in children’s book publishing for over a decade. Now a full-time mom and writer, Ashley lives in a sunny Brooklyn apartment with her cute husband, her cuter dog,...

Jerid P. Woods (Akili Nzuri)

Jerid P. Woods, also known as Akili Nzuri, is a writer, educator, PhD Candidate, and literary influencer. He was born and raised in Natchez, MS and survives on an unwavering passion to ignite a love for reading in the youth. He exists as a living testimony to the power of...

Dr. Willie J. Wright

Willie Wright is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Florida and the 2022 Scholar-in-Residence at Rice University's Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. His writing appears in Ryan Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown's A Movement in Every Direction: A Great Migration Critical Reader. His forthcoming text, On...

Snowden Wright

Snowden Wright is the author of the novel American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month, selection for Barnes & Noble's "Discover Great New Writers" program, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and NPR Favorite Book of the Year. A graduate...

Steve Yarbrough

Steve Yarbrough is the author of eleven books, most recently the novel The Unmade World, due out in January 2018. His other books are the nonfiction title Bookmarked: Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, the novels The Realm of Last Chances, Safe from the Neighbors, The End...

Adrienne Young

Adrienne Young is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she's not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, sipping wine over long dinners or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her...

Kyle Zimmer

Kyle Zimmer is the President, CEO and Co-founder of First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise advancing educational equity for children (ages 0-18) in underserved communities. First Book's systemic approach is powered by integrated models that aggregate the voice, knowledge and purchasing power of adults serving low-income...

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