Ferris
to receive Richard Wright
Literary Excellence Award
Dr. William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for
the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, will receive the Richard
Wright Literary Excellence Award at a Mississippi celebration
Feb. 25.
The award was established in 1994 by the Natchez
Literary and Cinema Celebration to honor Richard Wright, author
of Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), who
was born near Natchez. Ferris and Dr. Noel Polk of Mississippi State
University will receive the award this year. Winners must be outstanding
writers with a strong Mississippi connection. Past winners include
such writers as Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Elizabeth Spencer, Beth
Henley, John Grisham and William Raspberry.
The celebration annually features lectures by nationally known
scholars and writers, enhanced by related cultural events and the
presentation of the Richard Wright award.
Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History, is
a leading voice on Southern studies, music and folklore. He joined
the Carolina faculty in 2002.
A native of Vicksburg, Miss., and an award-winning scholar, Ferris
chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1997 to 2001.
Before that, he was founding director of the Center for the Study
of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was
a faculty member for 18 years.
Ferris has written or edited 10 books and created 15 documentary
films, most of which deal with black music and other folklore from
the Mississippi Delta. He co-edited the massive “Encyclopedia
of Southern Culture” (1989), which was nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize. His films include “Mississippi Blues” (1983),
which was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. His many honors
include the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities from former
President Bill Clinton, the American Library Association’s
Dartmouth Medal and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters
Award.
|
