500+ students who register for this day of HOMEGROWN programming through the Live Oak Writing Project will learn creative writing skills through hands-on sessions facilitated by graduate students from the USM Hattiesburg CENTER FOR WRITERS, as well as enjoy a keynote session featuring Jason Reynolds and Jesmyn Ward.

Please send questions about registration to: Rebecca.a.powell@usm.edu.

MacArthur Fellows Jason and Jesmyn will be in conversation on The University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Park Campus a day ahead of the public HOMEGROWN event.

Jason served as Library of Congress Ambassador for Young People’s Literature from 2020-2022 and has authored almost two dozen books including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, All American Boys (with Brendan Kiely), Long Way Down, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (with Ibram X. Kendi), Stuntboy, in the Meantime (illustrated by Raúl the Third), and Ain’t Burned All the Bright (with artwork by Jason Griffin).

Currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University, Jesmyn is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.