Morris wins Mississippi Library Association writing award

New Albany native Dr. Joe Edd Morris was one of three recipients of the 2020 Mississippi Author Awards presented by the Mississippi Library Association this past Thursday.

The ceremony usually includes an awards dinner but was done virtually via Zoon this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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. Awards are given for fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature. Recipients must be Mississippi natives or have lived in the state for five years.

Morris won the fiction award for The Prison, described as a sequel to Morris’ previous novel, Land Where My Fathers Died, for which he won the Mississippi Library Association award in 2003.

The book is not really a sequel, according to Morris.

“It’s really a tetralogy, four books,” he said. “Inherit the Land was the sequel. It was the second book but nobody was interested. The Will was next, then The Prison.”

Morris was introduced by Judith Hilkert of Hinds Community College, who noted Morris is heavily involved in the Union County Library System. “He has donated lots of time and money from book sales,” she said.

In fact, due to the pandemic no book sale was held this year so Morris donated $1,000 to the library in lieu of sales. He also donated his honorarium from the award to the library.

“He is kind of a Renaissance man,” she said, referring to his interests in philosophy, psychology and theology.

Morris has in fact worked as a prison psychiatrist, helping give him insight to his work.

“You couldn’t pick a person who was more of an advocate of libraries,” he said.

“This is one of the top 10 things in my life,” Morris said.

In referring to his book, he said when writing he tries to write the last sentence first. In this case it was “The prison is everywhere.”

Although Morris read what he referred to as “short bursts” of his book, he commented extensively on the value of libraries.

“Prisons are everywhere but, thank God, so are libraries,” he said.

He pointed out that when the Romans attacked Alexandria, one of the first things Caesar did was to destroy the library to remove the essence of Egyptian culture.

“I would said that’s an analogy to cyber attacks today,” he said.

“Libraries tell you more about a city than any other institution, except maybe schools,” he said. “The size of a library is a proven direct predictor of the success in reading scores. It’s an indirect predictor of success.”

“I shudder to think of Mississippi without its libraries,” he added.

Morris is a licensed psychologist and jury consultant, maintaining his private practice for 30 years while also teaching at several university and community colleges. He has served as a United Methodist minister in Mississippi, Georgia, Scotland, Colorado, and Washington D.C. including a year serving as chaplain on the DEWline above the Arctic Circle.

He was written scholarly non-fiction books, particularly on theology, in addition to his works of fiction.

Kiese Laymon was the 2020 winner in the non-fiction category for Heavy: An American Memoir. He is a Black southern writer from Jackson. In addition to winning this year’s MLA award, his bestselling memoir has won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times.

Jo Watson Hackl won the 2020 MLA juvenile award with Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe. She is the founder of outdoorosity.org and a lawyer with Wyche, PA. Her debut novel, Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, was published by Random House Books for Young Readers in July 2018. She received her B.A. from Millsaps College and her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Morris’ books are available from vendors such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

He added that a book he has written about his mother, the late Josie Ferguson Morris, is now in the review stage at University of Mississippi Press.

Morris concluded his remarks by echoing his book, saying, “Prisons are everywhere. There are all types of prisons. If you’re living, you’re serving time.”

He did have three suggestions for writers: “Never give up. Read, read, read. And never throw anything away.”

The Mississippi Library Association has bestowed the Mississippi Author Award since 1987.

Past winners include Jesmyn Ward, Greg Iles, Julie Cantrell, Nevada Barr, Donna Tartt, John Grisham, Ellen Gilchrist, Larry Brown and Richard Ford.