Literary Arts
355 West Monticello St.
Brookhaven, Mississippi
Mississippi School of the Arts welcomes Alysia Burton Steele.
Alysia is assistant professor of journalism at the School of Journalism and New Media at The University of Mississippi where she teaches beginning writing, podcasting, photojournalism, audio/video production and the undergraduate capstone class.
She is author of the book “Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom,” which is a collection of formal portraits and oral histories from elder African American church women, including civil rights activist Mrs. Myrlie Evers. The book was endorsed by Gloria Steinem and Roy Blount, Jr., to name a few, and highlights life during the Jim Crow era in Mississippi. In 2016, Mississippi Humanities Council named Steele the 2016 “Preserver of Mississippi Culture” award winner.
Steele worked as an award-winning photojournalist and picture editor at newspapers for over 12 years, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Dallas Morning News, where she was part of the photo team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News for their Hurricane Katrina coverage. She served as one of the picture editors. Steele earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, her master’s in photography from Ohio University and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Mississippi’s Arch Dalrymple III Department of History.
She is currently working on her second book about the role of cotton in Mississippi with her husband Bobby D. Steele, Jr. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Listen to the latest episode on Creative Expression, an audio podcast production by the Mississippi School of the Arts: E5 – Telling Stories With Alysia Burton Steele (Published April 4, 2019)