This year's Corrington Award recipient is Maurice Carlos Ruffin!
The John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence is presented annually by the English Department on behalf of the Centenary student body and faculty to an established writer who has earned the critical esteem of readers who distinguish artistic accomplishment from commercial success.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin, the winner of this year's Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, will give a reading and accept his award in a ceremony at Marjorie Lyons Playhouse on Monday, October 28th, 2024. Learn more about Ruffin!
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Corrington Award Recipient 2024
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the newly-published historical novel, The American Daughters. He also wrote The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. Ruffin was the 2022 Grand Marshal of the Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats and recipient of the 2022 Louisiana Board of Regents ATLAS grant. Ruffin is part of the Artist Network of Narrative 4, an organization dedicated to aiding the educational opportunities of young people.
The brainchild of the English department, the Corrington Award honors a Centenary alumnus and English major, Bill Corrington (1932-1988). With degrees from Rice University (MA, 1960), the University of Sussex (D.Phil., 1964), and Tulane University (J.D., 1975), Corrington pursued a peripatetic career. He was variously an English professor, an attorney in private practice, and, with his wife, Joyce, the head writer for several television series, including Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital. A prolific poet, he also published four novels, two short novels, and three collections of short stories. He is probably best known as the author of the short novel Decoration Day, thanks to the 1990 film starring James Garner,
The Corrington Award
Bill Cobbs, Ruby Dee, and Laurence Fishburne. With Miller Williams, Corrington edited the two-volume anthology Southern Writing in the Sixties. About this influential collection of poems and short stories Ernest J. Gaines observed when accepting the second annual Corrington Award, "Many young Southerners unknown then are known today. And much of that can be credited to Corrington and Williams."
The Corrington Award takes the form of a bronze medal designed by the internationally exhibited Louisiana sculptor Clyde Connell. The medal depicts two primitive figures, one of them slightly in front of the other, carrying a long object. A presentation box, hand made by a local craftsman, accompanies the medal.
A book by the year's Corrington recipient figures in all sections of first-year writing courses, and students are able to interact with the author both in and out of class.
Originally the award got its funding from the Student Government Association. Its inception thus represented an unusual cooperative venture by a student union and an academic department. The award now benefits from generous donations by the Corrington and Attaway families.
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