Literary Arts
355 West Monticello St.
Brookhaven, Mississippi
Dr. A. H. Jerriod Avant was born and raised in Longtown, Mississippi. His first book, Muscadine, is out (September 15, 2023) from Four Way Books. A graduate of Jackson State University, Jerriod has earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. A graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, he’s received scholarships from the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference and Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. A former resident at the James Castle House and Vermont Studio Center, Jerriod has received two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and an emerging artist grant from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, Pinwheel, Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Obsidian, The Yale Review, and other journals. Jerriod’s work has been produced in collaboration with the Emily Harvey Foundation, the Highline NYC, and the Kitchen Lab. Most recently, he earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Rhode Island and was a Teaching Fellow in English at Wesleyan University for the 2022-2023 academic year. Jerriod is the 2024-2025 John and Renee Grisham Writer-In-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
Dr. A. H. Jerriod Avant will be leading poetry masterclasses on the palindrome from and treating language as matter. His visit to Mississippi School of the Arts will include a public reading and Q&A in the Enochs Black Box Theatre on Thursday, December 7th at 6pm.