Center for Southern Studies to award 2025 Thomas Robinson Prize to award-winning author Jill McCorkle

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A woman with long dark hair and a black blouse stands on a porch, arms crossed, holding glasses, with a slight smile.
Jill McCorkle

MACON — Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will award the 2025 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to award-winning author Jill McCorkle. The prize will be presented Feb. 13 at 6 p.m. in the University’s Presidents Dining Room.

“Jill McCorkle writes about ordinary people in the contemporary South with sensitivity, humor and nuance,” said Dr. David A. Davis, chair of the Robinson Prize Committee. “She is a modern master of the short story, and her prolific works demonstrate an exceptional range of virtuosity in genre and technique. Her probing analysis of domestic life and complex interiority have established a contemplative tone in contemporary southern writing.”  

Jill McCorkle is the author of seven novels and five story collections including her latest novel, Hieroglyphics, and her newest collection of short stories, Old Crimes. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books, and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories. McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Prize. She was recently inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame.

“I am thrilled to accept the Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature and honored to join the esteemed company of past recipients,” said McCorkle. “I am deeply grateful to the selection committee and look forward to my time at Mercer.”

The Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature recognizes writers who have engaged and extended the long, often complicated, tradition of writing about the South. The selection committee for the Robinson Prize includes Mercer professors, eminent scholars of Southern literature and members of the Macon community. Previous winners of the prize are Ernest Gaines (2012), Lee Smith (2013), Elizabeth Spencer (2014), Yusef Komunyakaa (2015), Wendell Berry (2016), Ellen Gilchrist (2017), Natasha Trethewey (2018), Fred Chappell (2019), Ron Rash (2020), Barbara Kingsolver (2021), Nikky Finney (2022), Percival Everett (2023) and Rita Dove (2024).

Dr. Joe Sam Robinson, Jr., and his wife Betsy Robinson, of Macon, made a gift to assist Mercer in meeting a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant during the 2016-17 reporting year. Their financial commitment created a new endowment, the Thomas McRae Hamilton Robinson Endowment, within the Center for Southern Studies that supports a public reading by the prize winner at the annual presentation ceremony. The endowment honors the memory of their son Thomas Robinson and significantly enhances literary programming in Middle Georgia by underwriting the event.

About the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies

The Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies fosters critical discussions about the many meanings of the South. As the only center for Southern studies in the United States dedicated to the education and enrichment of undergraduate students, the Center’s primary purpose is to examine the region’s complex history and culture through courses, conversations and events that are open, honest and accessible.