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ABOUT THE RICHARD WRIGHT LITERARY EXCELLENCE AWARD… The Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award was established in 1994 by the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration to honor the internationally known author, Richard Wright. This man was born near Natchez in 1908, the son of a country schoolteacher and an illiterate sharecropper. Wright’s first novel, Native Son, was published in 1940 and was an immediate success. His Black Boy, a fictionalized autobiography, was published in 1945 and sold 400,000 copies in three months. After leaving Natchez, Wright worked in Chicago and later moved to Paris, where he died in 1960. Winners of the award are honored each year for a body of literary work. They must be outstanding, living writers with a strong Mississippi connection. The award has been funded each year by Natchez Newspapers Inc., publisher of The Natchez Democrat and The Miss-Lou Guide. Wright was also honored by the Celebration on June 9, 1990, when an historic marker bearing his name was erected on the Natchez Bluff in ceremonies attended by Wright family members and friends. Winners of the award are:
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