Poet Joy Priest brings prize-winning collection ‘Horsepower’ to Mississippi State
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.––Mississippi State’s Department of English welcomes acclaimed poet Joy Priest to campus Sept. 21 as the featured guest for the 2026 Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series.
The free, public event begins at 5:30 p.m. in Old Main Academic Center Room 1030. Priest will share excerpts from her award-winning 2020 collection “Horsepower,” followed by a Q&A and book signing. The University of Pittsburgh Press publication won the 2020 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, named for the former U.S. Poet Laureate.
“In her deeply moving and expansive poems, Joy Priest explores the intersection of race, gender and the South using a language where the lyric and the vernacular collide,” said Samyak Shertok, MSU assistant professor of English and event organizer. “Her work is intellectually rich, deeply engaging and beautifully crafted, and we’re thrilled to bring her to Mississippi State. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students and community members to experience the words of an acclaimed poet in person.”
Priest also will present a craft talk exploring the writing process and the techniques behind her work on the same day at 12:30 p.m. in McCool Hall Room 212, and all interested students are welcome to attend.
Editor of “Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology,” her work spans poetry, essays and cultural criticism and has appeared in publications including the Boston Review, New Republic, Sewanee Review and on ESPN. Her work also has been commissioned for exhibitions by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center fellowship and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Priest serves on the faculty of Randolph College and University of Pittsburgh MFA programs in creative writing and is a curator at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. Her second collection of poems, “The Black Outside,” is set for release in 2027 from Duke University Press.
The Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series was established through an endowment from Alice Carol Caldwell and her family in memory of her late husband, Price Caldwell, a former MSU English professor and founder of the university’s creative writing program. Caldwell was devoted to fostering literary talent and was a leader in the Southern Literary Festival organization.
For more information, contact Shertok through the MSU Department of English. For details about the College of Arts and Sciences or the Department of English, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.english.msstate.edu.
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