“Mississippi Blue 42,” a novel written by Arkansas Tech University’s Eli Cranor, is among the finalists for the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing in the fiction category.
“Each year, the Willie Morris Awards for Southern Writing honor some of the best literature telling rich, original stories about the U.S. South marked by a strain of honest optimism,” reads a portion of the awards program’s website. “The award-winning works reflect a belief that things can be better, that the South — a region marked by systemic racism and economic extraction — can still be a place of opportunity and hope.”
According to information provided by publisher Soho Crime, “Mississippi Blue 42” centers on an investigation by special agent Rae Johnson into the “tangled web of a college football empire…and the bloody greed that fuels it.”
Soho Crime’s description states that “Mississippi Blue 42” provides “a hard and often hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics.”
It is the most recent of four novels authored by Cranor. The others are “Don’t Know Tough,” “Ozark Dogs” and “Broiler.”
Cranor graduated from Russellville High School and played college football at Florida Atlantic University and Ouachita Baptist University. He also played professional football and was a high school football coach before launching his writing career.
A member of the ATU faculty since 2023, Cranor lives in his hometown of Russellville with his wife and children. He is writer in residence and instructor in the ATU Department of English and World Languages and the ATU College of Arts and Humanities.
Learn more about the Willie Morris Awards for Southern Writing at www.williemorrisawards.org.
Learn more about “Mississippi Blue 42” at www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/778180/mississippi-blue-42-by-eli-cranor.
Learn more about the ATU Department of English and World Languages at www.atu.edu/humanities/worldlanguages.
