The Mississippi Arts Hour interview with Larry Morrisey

I have been reminded by several Mississippians lately that a cardinal date approaches. Or maybe I should say a mockingbird date. This June of 2015, I will have lived in Mississippi for 17 years. Tammy Sue and I moved here from the Arkansas Ozarks in 1998. I was born in St. John’s Hospital, now Mercy Hospital, in Springfield, Missouri, and lived in the same house on Meadowview in Southern Hills subdivision in Springfield for 21 years.

November of 2019 I will have lived in Flowood, Mississippi, just as long as I lived in my hometown.

I think the interview above with Larry Morrisey, Deputy Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, says a lot about why. The Mississippi Arts Commission has supported my fiction not once, but twice with generous artist fellowships. One of those fellowships was awarded for a portion of my novel The Teeth of the Souls. The grant was for the second chapter, set in St. Louis and Springfield, and nowhere near Mississippi.

As that mockingbird date approaches, I’m so thankful for MAC’s support of my fiction. And I can’t thank Mississippi enough for the welcome it has given me.