Autograph Series presents writers of national and international stature—many of them recipients of major prizes such as the Pulitzer or National Book Award—in free public performances followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. Ours is one of the few such series in the nation offered to the public at no cost. Autograph Series is partially supported by a ticketed colloquium luncheon with the visiting writer. Previous Autograph writers include Margaret Atwood, U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Ha Jin, Edward P. Jones, Tim O’Brien, Grace Paley, Philip Levine, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Terrance Hayes, among others.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays, WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote four previous poetry collections: OCEANIC (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), LUCKY FISH (2011), AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO (2007), and MIRACLE FRUIT (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press.  Her most recent chapbook is LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.