Porter Fleming Literary Competition

Submission Deadline: July 31

The 2010 Porter Fleming Literary Competition, now in its seventeenth year, recognizes the outstanding work of writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays who reside in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina. All are invited to enter. The deadline for submissions is July 31, 2010. Entry forms and guidelines can be found on www.themorris.org/porterfleming.html

“The Trustees of the Academy of Richmond County are honored to have sponsored the literary competition since its founding by Augusta author and artist Berry Fleming,” said Cobbs Nixon, a Trustee of the Academy of Richmond County. “Our hope is that this competition will foster more great writers within our city, state, and region.”

“We are, of course, very pleased to be associated in this important endeavor with our friends at the Porter Fleming Foundation,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “The region’s literature is an unusually rich component of the culture of the South. It offers us another means of achieving understanding of the region and its people, just as the visual arts, music, and dance do.”

The writing competition is held in memory of Porter Fleming, a prominent citizen of Augusta, Georgia. In 1963, Porter Fleming’s son, Berry Fleming, who had himself achieved renown as a writer, artist, and philanthropist, established a charitable foundation in honor of his father. To this day, the Porter Fleming Foundation contributes to the educational, literary, artistic, scientific, historical, musical, and cultural enrichment of the lives of the residents of the City of Augusta and the geographical area immediately adjacent to it in Georgia and South Carolina. The literary competition is administered by the Morris Museum of Art, the first museum in the country devoted to the art and artists of the American South, with the financial support of the Porter Fleming Foundation.

Porter Fleming Literary Competition winners receive cash awards. The awards will be presented during a special literary ceremony which will be held on Saturday, September 25, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Morris Museum of Art auditorium. The event takes place during the Westobou Festival, an annual celebration of the Arts in Augusta, Georgia.

The Morris Museum of Art was founded in 1985 and opened to the public in 1992. It is the oldest museum in the country that is devoted to the art and artists of the American South. The museum’s permanent collection of nearly five thousand works of art spans more than two hundred years, from the late-eighteenth century to the present. The Morris is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., and on Sunday, noon–5:00 p.m. For more information about the Morris Museum of Art, visit www.themorris.org or call 706-724-7501.