USM Professor Angela Ball’s Work Featured in Paris Review

Wed, 12/20/2023 - 11:49am | By: David Tisdale

Dr. Angela Ball, a professor of English in The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) School of Humanities, is featured with her poem Hares in the winter issue of The Paris Review, a prestigious quarterly literary magazine spotlighting the creative work of writers and artists worldwide.

The Paris Review was founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton; it has presented fiction, poetry, non-fiction and visual art by some of the world’s most respected and beloved creatives in its 70 years of publication.

Emily Stokes, editor of the Review, noted that “The pieces in this [winter 2023] issue share very little in common save their quality and perhaps the fact that they each represent, in some form, a quest to find out what the world is trying to be and what it is to live in it.”

Dr. Ball, who joined the USM English program first as a visiting instructor in 1979, said “Having a poem accepted by such a venerable journal feels like a wonderful validation for my life’s work. That the journal exists for art alone, with no commercial purpose, is particularly wonderful.”

A member of the USM renowned Center for Writers faculty, Dr. Ball’s areas of expertise include poetry writing, contemporary and modern literature, and world literature. She teaches such courses as Seminar in Creative Writing: Poetry; Poetic Forms; Undergraduate Poetry Workshop; and Contemporary World Literature, among others. In addition to The Paris Review, her work has also been featured in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly.

Dr. Ball has served as editor of the Mississippi Review and as a Poet-in-Residence at the University of Richmond; she is listed in Who’s Who of American Writers and Editors and included in the Best American Poetry anthologies. Her work has been recognized and honored on multiple occasions, including with the Susan B. Herron Award for highest ranked fellow by the Mississippi Arts Council, and on multiple occasions by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She is a recipient of one of the USM College of Arts and Science’s top honors, the Charles W. Moorman Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities.