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Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature

The Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature honors significant career contribution to southern writing in drama, fiction, or poetry. The prize takes its name from Sidney Lanier, the nineteenth-century southern poet born in Macon who wrote "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and "The Marshes of Glynn." Using his name recognizes Middle Georgia's literary heritage and the long, often complicated, tradition of writing about the South. The prize is awarded to writers who have engaged and extended that tradition.

Ernest J. Gaines will be the inaugural winner of the Lanier Prize. His works, set primarily in his native Louisiana, tell the stories of southerners living with dignity in the face of adversity. He has published several novels and collections of short stories, including the classics The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), A Gathering of Old Men (1983), and A Lesson Before Dying (1993). He has received a MacArthur Foundation grant and the National Humanities Medal of the United States among many other honors. The Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette fosters scholarship on his work.

Mr. Gaines will give a public reading in the Presidents Dining Room of the University Center at Mercer University on April 14, 2012, at 3:00 pm. The reading is free and open to the public.

The selection committee for the Lanier Prize includes Mercerians, eminent scholars of southern literature, and members of the Macon community. The committee members are James Bodell, President of Macon Arts Alliance; David A. Davis (Chair), Assistant Professor of English at Mercer University; Sarah Gardner, Professor of History at Mercer University; Minrose Gwin, Kenan Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Trudier Harris, Professor of English at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa; Gordon Johnston, Professor of English at Mercer University; Michael Kreyling, Professor of English at Vanderbilt University; Matthew Martin, Knox Professor of Humanities at Wesleyan College; and Pam Thomasson, President of Historic Macon.

Mercer University also offers Sidney Lanier scholarships. High-achieving high school juniors are invited to submit works of fiction or poetry for consideration for up to twenty thousand dollars of scholarship funding, contingent on admission and enrollment at Mercer.