Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Announces Winners

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) has announced award winners for works shown or published in 2008 in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, visual arts, poetry, photography, music composition (classical/concert), and music composition (contemporary/
popular). Judges from outside the state chose the winning artists, who must have significant ties to Mississippi and must have been nominated by an MIAL member. The presentations will be made at the annual awards ceremony and banquet on June 13, 2009, at the Lauren Rogers Art Museum in Laurel. This year marks the 30th anniversary of MIAL.

• Howard Bahr of Jackson won in the fiction category with his novel Pelican Road. Published by MacAdams/Cage, the novel is set during the heyday of railroading in this country and focuses on the men who ran the trains. Bahr was born in Meridian.

• The nonfiction award goes to Douglas A. Blackmon for Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, published by Doubleday and winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. Blackmon grew up in Leland and is currently head of the Atlanta office of the Wall Street Journal.

• In the visual arts category, the award goes to H. C. Porter, who was born in Jackson and now lives in Vicksburg. The traveling exhibition of Porter’s work, Backyards & Beyond: Mississippians and Their Stories—The First Year after Katrina, has a companion book for which poet Natasha Tretheway wrote the introduction.

• Greenville native Brooks Haxton won in the poetry category with They Lift Their Wings to Cry published by Alfred A. Knopf. Haxton teaches in the English and writing programs at Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College. He is son of last year’s MIAL Lifetime Achievement Award winner, author Ellen Douglas.
  

• Jane Rule Burdine won in the photography category for her work published in Delta Deep Down, edited by Wendy McDaris and with an introduction by novelist Steve Yarbrough. Burdine was born in Greenwood and lives now in Taylor.

• "Between Stillness" by composer Steve Rouse was the winning work in the classical/concert music composition category. Rouse was born in Moss Point, has a degree in music composition from the University of Southern Mississippi, and currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

• In contemporary/popular music composition, the group 3 Doors Down won for their album 3 Doors Down. Founder Matt Roberts was born in Pascagoula. Other members are Brad Arnold, Matt Roberts, Todd Harrell, and Chris Henderson.

Recipients in each category will be awarded a cash prize of $1,000 and a Mississippi-made gift. Past winners include Walker Percy, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Tom Rankin, Natasha Trethewey, Richard Ford, Samuel Jones, and Clifton Taulbert. Two previously announced Lifetime Achievement Awards will be presented at the June ceremony to Marshall Bouldin III, cited by the New York Times as “the South’s foremost portrait painter,” and to writer Elizabeth Spencer, author of nine novels, three short story collections, and her memoir of growing up in Carrollton, Landscapes of the Heart.

Ann Abadie of Oxford serves as president of MIAL. Jan Taylor of Jackson is treasurer, Margaret Anne Robbins of Pontotoc is secretary, and Noel Polk of Starkville is past president. Among the founders of MIAL were William Winter, Cora Norman, Aubrey Lucas, Noel Polk, and Keith Dockery McLean. Anyone may join MIAL. For more information about joining and about attending the awards ceremony and banquet, visit the Web site www.ms-arts-letters-org.

Dorothy Shawhan

Library Exhibition Features Walter Anderson

Artwork by renowned artist, writer, and naturalist Walter Inglis Anderson is on exhibit at the J. D. Williams Library through January 2010. The 60-piece display, Walter Anderson and World Literature, is hosted by the Department of Archives and Special Collections on the library’s third floor.

Featuring line drawings, watercolors, and panels inspired by great works of literature such as Don Quixote, The Iliad, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, The Magic Carpet, and block prints from Anderson’s books An Alphabet and Robinson—created for his own children—the exhibition stretches along three walls.

“There are many artists who explored a story but few who fused with it,” said Patricia Pinson, former curator of exhibitions at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. “The book to Anderson was a way of life, part of the quest to find realization and meaning. It was the distillation of the timeless epics that gave him the grasp of the significance of the moment. Great books and great art are about insight, and Anderson gives us insight into both.” A voracious reader, Anderson created nearly 10,000 pen-and-ink drawings to illustrate page after page of the books as he would read them.

“It’s exciting for the library to showcase this wonderful exhibit of work by Walter Anderson,” said Jennifer Ford, head of Archives and Special Collections. “His genius can be clearly seen, as well as his love for literature. We hope that our patrons will be able to get a glimpse into his world.”

While Anderson’s “world” stretched from his home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to faraway places such as China and South America, he found solace in being alone, often immersed in the imaginary world of books. “Daddy was essentially on a quest—he was pursuing the Holy Grail,” said Anderson’s son John Anderson, curator of the library exhibition.

Sponsored in conjunction with the 16th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, which was dedicated to Walter Anderson, the exhibition was the focus of the conference’s opening session March 26. Following its close at the library, plans call for the exhibit to travel to other libraries, cultural centers, and schools for years to come.

“This exhibit might be little explosions if allowed to be shown in schools where children can look at the work and say, ‘Wait a minute, I see something another way,’” John Anderson said.