Arts & Culture in Mississippi

Statue of Emmett Till

Greenwood

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The Emmett Till Memorial Statue was unveiled in 2022, in Greenwood, near the site where the 14-year-old was abducted and lynched in 1955. Recognized as the only official statue honoring Till in the United States, the sculpture serves as a […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Eudora Welty

Jackson

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One of Mississippi’s most acclaimed writers, Eudora Welty was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the French Legion of Honor. Eudora Welty typically drew inspiration from her home state for her fictional stories. […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Shelby Foote

Greenville

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Shelby Dade Foote Jr. was born November 17, 1916, in Greenville. He began his early career as an author publishing five works of fiction. Foote, however, will forever be remembered as a historian, particularly of Civil War history. […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Walker Percy

Greenville

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Walker Percy’s first published novel, The Moviegoer, won the 1962 National Book Award. He is the author of six novels, two non-fiction books, and numerous scientific and philosophical essays. […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Elizabeth Spencer

Carrollton

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After receiving encouragement from Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer began a long career of teaching and writing award-winning fiction. Her works are collected in the distinguished Library of America Series. […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Ida B. Wells

Holly Springs

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Born to slave parents in Holly Springs, Ida B. Wells became a journalist and entrepreneur, serving as co-owner of the Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper Free Speech. Her investigative style of journalism publicized the often unreported accounts of mob lynching in the […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Tennessee Williams

Clarksdale

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The world-renowned playwright Tennessee Williams set some of his greatest dramas, including Summer and Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Orpheus Descending, in the Mississippi Delta, while others of his plays —notably The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Richard Wright

Natchez

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Wright published his first story at sixteen, and in 1940 he achieved national fame with his best-selling novel, Native Son. Arguably one of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, the novel was adapted for film and stage. […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Anne Moody

Centreville

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A heroine of the Civil Rights Movement, Anne Moody was born in 1940 in Wilkinson County near Centreville. In her classic 1968 memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she articulates what it was like to grow up in poverty, to […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Dorothy Shawhan

Cleveland

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Enlivened by a sense of humor and wild imagination, Dorothy Shawhan’s stories could conjure up Faulkner’s ghost or depict contemporary pilgrims telling tales on a trip to Memphis. In three carefully researched biographies, she retrieves the lives of lesser-known Mississippi […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Richard Ford

Clarksdale

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Richard Ford won critical acclaim with his first two novels, A Piece of My Heart (1976), and The Ultimate Good Luck (1981). Ford is the author of The Sportswriter, a book that brought him international acclaim and was named one […]

Mississippi Writers Trail – Willie Morris

Yazoo City

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Willie Morris was editor for the Texas Observer and later became editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine in New York. In 1980, Morris returned to Mississippi to become writer-in-residence at Ole Miss. Notable among his twenty-three award-winning books are North Toward Home, […]