Chowan University is pleased to announce that Junious “Jay” Ward is the recipient of the 2026 Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters. Junious “Jay” Ward is a poet and teaching artist living in Charlotte, North Carolina. A native of Rich Square, North Carolina, he is the author of Composition (Button Poetry, 2023) and Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press, 2020), and he currently serves as Charlotte’s inaugural poet laureate. With musical precision and emotional depth rooted in cultural memory, his poetry offers a lyrical vision of the South, one that reflects its history while reimagining it through language that heals, challenges, and endures.

Initiated in 1995 by the Hobson Family Foundation of San Francisco, the award serves as a memorial to Mary Frances Hobson (1912-1993), a journalist and poet, who was the first woman to receive the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in journalism from the University of North Carolina. Previously honored recipients are Kaye Gibbons (1995), Mark Richard (1996), Jill McCorkle (1997), Randall Kenan (1998), G.D. Gearino (1999), Amy Hempel (2000), Allan Gurganus (2001), Padgett Powell (2002), Sheri Reynolds (2003), Chuck Sullivan (2004), Sheila Moses (2005), Michael Parker (2006), Josephine Humphreys (2007), Judy Goldman (2008), Darnell Arnoult (2009), Lee Smith (2010), Robert Morgan (2011), Silas House (2012), Joseph Bathanti (2013), Sharyn McCrumb (2014), Dorothy Allison (2015), Edward P. Jones (2016), Kevin Wilson (2017), Jim Grimsley (2018), Wiley Cash (2019), Crystal Wilkinson (2020), Michel Stone (2021), Daniel Wallace (2022), David Sanchez (2023), De’Shawn Charles Winslow (2024), and Stephanie Powell Watts (2025)

The annual event brings the university and community together each spring to celebrate the accomplishments of an author of the South or who writes about the South. The 32nd prize will be conferred on Monday, April 13, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. at a dinner in the Chowan Room in Thomas Dining Hall. Following the dinner and conferral, Ward will deliver the Hobson Lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Vaughan Auditorium in Robert Marks Hall.

The public is invited to attend the Hobson Lecture. Please contact theOffice of the Provost at 252-398-6211 or cuprovost@chowan.edu for more information.