Author: benjaminalanmorris

Pelican Bomb has a longer review of “Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories” currently on view at NOMA until September 16. I’m grateful to the editors for their insightful questions, and to the curators for their welcome as I made my many visits; if you’re in the area and you haven’t yet seen the show, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

This year’s Mississippi Book Festival is next weekend, August 18, on the grounds of the state capitol in Jackson. Free, open to the public, featuring hundreds of authors and dozens of events, including the protean Jesmyn Ward and Salman Rushdie, this year’s festival promises to be the best yet. If you’re anywhere in the area, brave the humidity, clear off your nightstand, and come ready to revel in a day with thousands of other readers, writers, and book-lovers. Full schedule and panel information available here.

Again, I am stunned to have received a second Literary Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission, this time for poetry. My first, in 2011, came at a time when outside financial assistance was key to my finishing a book; remarkably, this second grant arrives at a similar time, as I’m working towards the first full draft of a new longer work of fiction, and I could not be more grateful.

More information about the MAC fellowship program is on their website; next year grants will be awarded in screenwriting, playwriting, and creative nonfiction.

I am beyond honored to have received one of the 2018 Monroe Fellows Research Grants from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, in support of a work of fiction currently underway. This grant will enable me to travel to the region where the book is set twice this year, and enable a deeper understanding and infusion of that landscape into the story. The NOCGS was gracious enough to support the early research for the Hattiesburg book; I’m beyond grateful to their jurors for believing in this current work. More information about NOCGS is on their website.

Pelican Bomb has a short review of the Kaori Maeyama show up at Staple Goods Gallery, on view through July 8.

I’m thrilled to say that the newly-formed Peauxdunque Review, formed out of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance in New Orleans, has taken two poems for their first issue. My thanks to the editors, and what a joy to see this new chorus of voices arriving on the scene.

After only nine years of submitting, I’m beyond thrilled to say that the Southern Review has two poems in its spring issue (audio available at the link).