Mississippi State University’s English department continues to celebrate the success of Catherine Pierce, assistant professor and co-director of the creative writing program at MSU, following her recent achievements. This spring, Pierce was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters award for poetry regarding the publication of her recent book of poems, The Girls of Peculiar.
Pierce said she was deeply honored by the recognition of her works and by her association with the MIAL, an organization which supports artists, writers and musicians in the state of Mississippi.
“I was thrilled when I found out that I had won,” Pierce said. “I think what any writer is doing is writing and hoping that eventually their work gets in front of people, but really writing is a solitary endeavor. So when there’s some kind of recognition of that – somebody did read it and liked it and thought that it was worthy of recognition – that feels really nice. It’s a real honor.”
Michael Kardos, assistant professor and co-director of the creative writing program at MSU, said Pierce has deserved her recent success and helps to promote an active interest in creative writing among students.
“I think it is wonderful,” he said. “I think any time there’s information out there that encourages students to take English or creative writing classes, it’s a good thing.”
Kardos, 2012 MIAL fiction winner, said although he does not consider the current state of creative writing to be near extinction, awards like MIAL help bring exposure and longevity to individual authors like Pierce and their work.
“I don’t know if creative writing needs help being kept alive. I think that there’s always talk about the demise of the novel, poetry, civilization, but I don’t really think it’s going anywhere,” Kardos said. “But I think anytime that a book can get some attention focused on it, it prolongs its life and let’s more people know about it.”
Richard Raymond, professor and head of the English department at MSU, said the MIAL poetry award is one of many prestigious achievements that help reaffirm Pierce’s success as an educator and talent as a creative writer.
“It’s a great milestone for her. It shows that her recognition is certainly regional, statewide, but she’s won other awards and in a very short period of time developed a national and even international reputation,” Raymond said. “Other creative writing professors use her poetry in their creative writing classes as required texts. She has a tremendous following of students.”
Pierce said the awarded collection, “The Girls of Peculiar,” emerged from a nearly three-and-a-half-year interest and personal exploration of adolescence and the influence of nostalgia. In addition, the project included a more serious evaluation of language and poem length.
“I was just trying to write poems that interested me,” she said. “The style of the poems was a little bit different. I was interested, in this book, more in economy of language. I wanted to kind of cut the flab from my poems. The subject matter was different too.The first book -“Famous Last Words” -had a lot to do with America, ideas of America, and this book has more to do with adolescence and ideas of memory, the way that when you’re 15, 16, 17 years old. You’re between worlds. You can feel young, and you can even feel older than you are, world weary in certain ways.”
Raymond said though Pierce’s poems focus on the tension of adolescence, they transcend age barriers, accessing universal themes with which readers of all generations can identify.
“The voice that is clear in every single poem is one of her strengths. Certainly, they have appeal to younger readers but also to older readers. That’s part of her magic too,” he said. “Her themes are the classic themes of the heart, and whatever the gender, whatever the age, I think anybody could relate to them.”
Raymond also said the award reflects the exceptional balance of technical and artistic influence in Pierce’s writing.
“The award recognizes a dual thread that she teaches in her courses – that there’s the craft of poetry which means there’s certain strategies and literary devices that one can learn to make the poem happen – but there’s also the art. I think her publication, ‘The Girls of Peculiar,’ is a really fine illustration of the craft blending and becoming inseparable from the art.”  
In response to her recent achievements, Pierce said she is happy with the current state of her career as both a writer and an educator, and she hopes to remain successful and consistent in her future endeavors.
 ”I hope that I can maintain the trajectory that I’m on where I’m writing and publishing and having books come out,” she said. “I’m very happy with the way that I’m able to teach and write and the way that those two things dovetail.”