Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State English professor and scholar Noel Polk is a 2006 winner of the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award.
He and other award winners will be honored Feb. 25 during the annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration at the Natchez Convention Center.
The award was established by the Natchez-based organization in 1994 to honor the internationally known author, Richard Wright, who was born near Natchez in 1908. Wright, who died in 1960, authored such novels as "Native Son" and "Black Boy."
A specialist in American fiction and noted authority on the works of Mississippi writers William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, Polk joined the university's English department in 2004. He currently serves as editor of the Mississippi Quarterly.
A Picayune native, Polk is being honored for a body of work that includes: "Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun: A Critical Study;" "Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work;" "Reading Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury;" "Outside the Southern Myth;" and as editor of "Sanctuary: The Original Text."
Past Wright honorees include Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, Elizabeth Spencer, Richard Ford, Will Campbell, Barry Hannah, Beth Henley, John Grisham, Bill Minor, and retired MSU history professor John Marszalek.
Vicksburg native William Ferris, former longtime director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, also is receiving the 2006 Wright Award. Additionally, Jackson native and playwright Beth Henley will be honored as winner of the Horton Foote Award for Outstanding Screenplay Writing.
Celebration sponsors include Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Natchez National Historical Park, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
For more information, contact the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration at (601) 446-1208 or toll-free at (866) 296-6522; or visit www.colin.edu/nlcc.