The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College is proud to announce that Master Lecturer Mitchell S. Jackson was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his feature-length article, “Twelve Minutes and a Life,” originally published in Runner’s World Magazine. This award marks the first time someone affiliated with St. Joseph’s College has earned a Pulitzer Prize.
“Twelve Minutes and a Life” tells the story of Ahmaud Arbery and of how he was killed while jogging in his hometown of Brunswick, GA. Throughout the piece, the reader learns of the challenges Arbery faced growing up in and living in Brunswick, using running and the writer’s personal experiences to illustrate the racial issues that lay at the heart of his killing.
“St. Joseph’s College is honored to have Pulitzer-Prize winning Mitchell Jackson as a Master Lecturer in our distinguished MFA program,” said SJC President Donald R. Boomgaarden, Ph.D. “His remarkable account of the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery is one of the most powerful essays I have read in my lifetime.”
Jackson, who won in the Feature Writing category, serves as a master lecturer in the Writer’s Foundry. Master lecturers are nationally recognized authors selected by Foundry faculty to present lectures on their favorite books. Jackson also has served as a thesis advisor for many Foundry students in the past, sharing his insights on the craft of fiction writing with the aspiring authors.
Jackson’s debut novel “The Residue Years” received wide critical praise. He is the winner of a Whiting Award. His novel also won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Jackson’s honors include fellowships, grants and awards from Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Center for Fiction. A formerly incarcerated person, Jackson is also a social justice advocate who engages in outreach in prisons and youth facilities in the United States and abroad.
The Writer’s Foundry is still accepting applications for the upcoming academic year. For more information, go to mfa@sjny.edu.
