Mississippi State University Scholar Wins Her Second Pushcart Prize in Poetry

Catherine Pierce, a professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University, has received her second Pushcart Prize. Endowed and annually produced since 1976 by New York-based nonprofit Pushcart Prize Fellowships Inc., the respected prize series honors “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot” published in magazines and small presses over the previous year. The Pushcart Prize has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as “one of the most important publishing projects in American history.”

Professor Pierce was honored for her poem “Entreaty,” which was originally published in the magazine 32 Poems. Dr. Pierce also received a 2018 Pushcart Prize for her poem “I Kept Getting Books about Birds.” She is the author of the poetry collections The Girls of Peculiar (Saturnalia Books, 2012), The Tornado Is the World (Saturnalia Books, 2016), and Danger Days (Saturnalia Books, 2020).

Dr. Pierce has taught at Mississippi State University since 2007. She is a graduate of Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania and holds a master of fine arts degree from Ohio State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.