The purpose of the Mississippi Authors Awards Committee is to recognize and encourage Mississippi authors and promote interest in local authors’ books, whether the books are about Mississippi or another subject. This award was begun in 1987.
Criteria:
- Awards may be presented in three categories: Adult Fiction; Adult Non-fiction; or Youth Fiction or Non-fiction; if meritorious works have been published in each category.
- The honored author(s) must be a Mississippian by birth or have lived in Mississippi for at least five consecutive years.
- An editor, illustrator, or translator may be considered.
- The honored author(s) must be living.
- The award(s) shall be presented for a specific work rather than a body of work.
- To be eligible for consideration, a book must have been published within three calendar years preceding the year in which the award is made.
- Each work should be judged on its overall quality, with consideration given to literary merit, style and technique, originality, grammar, and if applicable, accuracy, authenticity, and illustrations.
- Nominations for works must be made by a current member of MLA to a committee member who will then bring the nomination to the full committee for consideration.
- If there are no worthy nominations in a category, no award will be given.
- Previous winners may be considered.
Winners:
- Fiction
- 2025 Jesmyn ward – Let us Descend
- 2024 Katy Simpson Smith – The Weeds
- 2023 Kelly Mustian – The Girls in the Stilt House
- 2022 Susan Farris – The Gravediggers Guild
- 2021 Paige Braddock – Love Letters to Jane’s World
- 2020 Joe Edd Morris – The Prison
- 2019 Tiffany Quay Tyson – The Past is Never
- 2018 Jesmyn Ward – Sing, Unburied, Sing
- 2017 Greg Iles – Natchez Burning
- 2016 Kiese Laymon – Long Division
- 2015 Carey Richard – Poppy Field Diary
- 2014 Michael Farris Smith – Rivers
- 2013 Julie Cantrell – Into the Free
- 2012 Ramona Bridges – Sweet By and By
- 2011 Mary Anna Evans – Floodgates
- 2010 Deborah Johnson – The Air Between Us
- 2009 Kathryn Stockett – The Help (2009), published by Putnam.
- 2008 Robert Dalby – Kissing Babies at the Piggly Wiggly (2007), G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
- 2007 Laura Evans – The Redemption of Nettie Sykes (2005), Xlibris.
- 2006 Bev Marshall – Right as Rain
- 2005 Charlaine Harris – Club Dead
- 2004 Davis L. Temple Jr. – Two Letters Then Booger Den: Land of Dark Waters
- 2003 Joe Edd Morris – Land Where My Fathers Died
- 2002 Bill Fitzhugh – Cross Dressing
- 2001 Martin Hegwood – Green-eyed Hurricane
- 2000 Steve Yarbrough – Oxygen Man
- 1999 Nevada Barr – Firestorm
- 1998 Howard Bahr – Black Flower
- 1997 Cathy Adams – Other Autumns
- 1996 Dorothy Shawhan – Lizzie
- 1995 Greg Iles – Black Cross
- 1994 Lewis Nordan – Wolf Whistle
- 1993 Donna Tartt – The Secret History
- 1992 John Grisham – The Firm
- 1991 Ellen Gilchrist – I Cannot Get You Close Enough
- 1990 Larry Brown – Dirty Work
- 1989 Ellen Douglas – Can’t Quit You Baby
- 1988 Terry Cline – Quarry
- 1987 Richard Ford – Sportswriter
- Non-Fiction
- 2025 Wright Thompson – The Barn
- 2024 Virginia McGee Butler – Becoming Exra Jack Keats
- 2023 Aimee Nezhukumatathil – World of Wonders
- 2022 Natasha Tretheway – Memorial Drive: A Memoir
- 2021 Sherye Green and Mildred Janzen – Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin
- 2020 Kiese Laymon – Heavy: An American Memoir
- 2019 Tena Clark – Southern Discomfort: A Memoir
- 2018 John F. Marszalek, David S. Nolen, and Loui P. Gallo – The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
- 2017 Richard Grant – Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta
- 2016 Suzanne Marrs – Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald
- 2015 John Hailman – From Midnight to Guntown
- 2014 Robert Khayat – The Education of a Lifetime
- 2013 Carolyn Brown – A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty Special
- 2012 Stokes McMillan – One Night of Madness
- 2011 Ellis Anderson – Under Surge Under Siege
- 2010 Chris Myers Asch – The Senator and the Sharecropper: the Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer
- 2009 Gerard Helferich – High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta (2007), published by Counterpoint.
- 2008 Walt Grayson – Looking around Mississippi (2007), Donning Company Publishers.
- 2007 Andrew P. Mullins, Jr. – The Measure of Our Days: Writings by William F. Winter (2006), University Press of Mississippi.
- 2006 Suzanne Marrs – Eudora Welty: A Biography
- 2005 Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays – Being dead is no excuse
- 2004 Minor Ferris Buchanan – Holt Collier: His Life, His Roosevelt Hunts, and the Origin of the Teddy Bear
- 2003 Ruth Williams – Younger Than That Now
- 2002 R. Scott Brunner – Due South: Dispatches from Down Home
- 2001 Norman Winter – Mississippi Gardener’s Guide
- 2000 Edward Cohen – Peddler’s Grandson
- 1999 Elizabeth Spencer – Landscapes of the Heart
- 1998 Clarice T. Campbell – Civil Rights Chronicle: Letters from the South
- 1997 Mary Carol Miller – Lost Mansions of Mississippi
- 1996 Majorue Spruill – New Women of the South
- 1995 Anne A. Lipscomb and Kathleen S. Hutchison – Tracing your Mississippi Ancestor
- 1994 John Marzalek – Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order
- 1993 Clifton Taulbert – Last Train North
- 1992 Charles Wilson and William Ferris – Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
- 1991 Melany Neilson – Even Mississippi
- 1990 Willie Morris – Homecoming
- 1989 Margaret Walker – Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius
- 1988 Felder Rushing – Gardening Southern Style
- 1987 Eudora Welty – One Writer’s Beginnings
- Special
- 2025 Marshall Ramsey – Saving Sam (Children’s) and Angie Thomas – Nic Blake and the remarkables: the manifest prophecy (YA)
- 2024 Sarah C. Campbell – Infinity: Figuring Out Forever (Children’s Award); Linda Williams Jackson – The Lucky Ones (Youth Award)
- 2023 J. Dillard – J. D. and the Great Barber Battle
- 2022 David W. Walker – The Witch’s Tower
- 2021 Corabel Shofner – Almost Paradise
- 2020 Jo Watson Hackl – Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe
- 2019 Linda Williams Jackson – Midnight Without a Moon
- 2018 Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give
- 2017 Matthew Clark Smith – Small Wonders: Jean-Henri Fabre and His World of Insects
- 2016 Hester Bass – Seeds of Freedom: The Peaceful Integration of Huntsville, Alabama
- 2015 Carolyn J. Brown – Song of My Life
- 2013 Augusta Scattergood – Glory Be
- 2012 Margaret McMullan – Sources of Light
- 2011 Hester Bass for Children’s Literature – The Secret World of Walter Anderson
- 2010 Sarah Campbell for Children’s Literature – Wolfsnail: a Backyard Predator
- 2008 Sherry Pace – Historic Churches of Mississippi (2007), University Press of Mississippi.
- 2006 Margaret McMullan – How I Found the Strong
- 2005 Harris Barnes – Cotton: a 50 year pictorial history: the photographs of Harris Barnes
- 2004 Freddi Williams Evans for Children’s Literature – A Bus of Our Own
- 2003 Wyatt Waters for Art – Southern Palate
- 2001 Maude Schuyler Clay for Photography – Delta Land
- 2000 Laurie Parker for Juvenile Literature – Everywhere in Mississippi and Mississippi Alphabet
- 1999 Peggy Prenshaw for Editorship