The Mississippi Library Association has announced the winners in the categories of Fiction, Non-Fiction, Youth, and Children’s Literature for the 2024 Mississippi Author Awards.
The Mississippi Authors Awards seek to recognize and encourage Mississippi authors and promote interest in local authors’ books, whether the books are about Mississippi or another subject.
MLA will honor the winners at the 2024 MLA Annual Conference (misslib.org/conference2024) on Thursday, Oct. 10.
Katy Simpson Smith: 2024 MLA Winner for Fiction – The Weeds
Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of the novels The Story of Land and Sea, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and one of Vogue’s Best Books of 2014; Free Men; The Everlasting, a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2020; and The Weeds, a New Yorker Best Book of 2023.
Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Granta, and elsewhere.
She received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835.
She lives in New Orleans.
See more about The Weeds at katysimpsonsmith.com/the-weeds
Virginia McGee Butler: 2024 MLA Winner for Non-Fiction – Becoming Ezra Jack Keats
Virginia McGee Butler grew up in North Mississippi and spent her teaching career wherever the Army sent her husband.
Retiring to write, she moved to Hattiesburg and soon visited the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi where she found a birth to death display of the life and works of Ezra Jack Keats. Her subsequent story “Celebrate Variety” in Highlights for Children featured his passion for including all children in
books. In turn, that led to a relationship with the collection and the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation.
She became the researcher for the 50th anniversary edition of The Snowy Day where she saw a need for the rest of his story to be in the hands of those who use his books. Her in-depth subsequent research has been used in other scholarly works about Keats and in this biography, Becoming Ezra
Jack Keats.
See more about Becoming Ezra Jack Keats at virginiamcgeebutler.com
Linda Williams Jackson: 2024 MLA Winner for Youth – The Lucky Ones
Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta town of Rosedale, Linda Williams Jackson is the author of award-winning middle grade novels centered around some of Mississippi’s most important historical moments.
Her first book, Midnight Without a Moon, which is centered around the Emmett Till murder, 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 Stars, the sequel to Midnight Without a Moon, received a Malka Penn Honor for an outstanding children’s book addressing human rights issues and was a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year.
Her most recent book, The Lucky Ones, was inspired by Robert Kennedy’s 1967 Poverty Tour of the Mississippi Delta and is loosely based on the author’s own family’s experiences. The Lucky Ones was recognized by Good Housekeeping magazine as one of the best 50 kids’ books of all time. Additional accolades for The Lucky Ones include Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Youth Book Award Winner, Foreword Reviews Indies Award Winner, New-York Historical Society Children’s History Book Prize Finalist, Common Sense Media’s Best Six Kids’ Books of 2022, Week Junior Magazine Best Seven Kids’ Books of 2022, Cooperative Children’s Book Center Best Books of the Year, and a Bank Street College Best Books of the Year.
Linda Williams Jackson is proud to still call Mississippi home.
See more about The Lucky Ones at lindajacksonwrites.blogspot.com
Sarah C Campbell: 2024 MLA Winner for Children’s – Infinity : Figuring Out Forever
Sarah C. Campbell is director of the Programs and Communication Division at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
She has more than two decades of experience working in communications and is the author and photo-illustrator of four award-winning nonfiction picture books for children.
Her journalism degrees are from Northwestern University, and she has a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University, which she attended as
Mississippi’s first woman Rhodes Scholar.
Campbell’s latest book, Infinity: Figuring Out Forever (Astra Young Readers, 2022) is her third book about mathematics. It follows Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature (Boyds Mills Press, 2014) and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (Boyds Mills Press, 2010). Her first book, Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator (Boyds Mills Press, 2008), is about a snail that eats other snails and slugs.
Kids, teachers, librarians, parents, and grandparents have embraced Campbell’s books for their simple, compelling texts and stunning up-close photographs. Wolfsnail is a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book, Mysterious Patterns is a Cook Prize Honor Book, and Infinity is a Cook Prize Silver Medalist.
Sarah’s husband, Richard P. Campbell, whose day job is working at a community development financial institution, partners with her to take the photographs for her books. Richard also does all the creative work with Photoshop and the programming and coding that go into her website and
video tutorials.
See more about Infinity : Figuring Out Forever at sarahccampbell.com
The Mississippi Library Association has bestowed the Mississippi Author Award since 1987.
For past winners of the MLA Mississippi Author Awards, please visit: misslib.org/author-awards
ABOUT THE MISSISSIPPI LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
The mission of the Mississippi Library Association is to provide professional leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.
MLA is a chapter of the American Library Association and the Southeastern Library Association.
