Jessica Hooten Wilson, an associate professor of literature and creative writing at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, has been selected to receive the 2019 Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The award recognizes accomplishment and potential in the humanities by a young scholar. The award includes a $50,000 prize.
Dr. Wilson’s research and teaching interests include Christianity and literature, especially Catholic literature and Russian novels. She has written three books: Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Wipf & Stock 2017), Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence (Ohio State University Press, 2017), and Reading Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018).
Dr. Wilson joined the faculty at John Brown University in 2013. Earlier, she taught at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, where she majored in creative writing, Dr. Wilson earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Dallas and a Ph.D. in religion and literature from Baylor University in Waco Texas.