Eli Cranor, writer in residence and instructor in the Arkansas Tech University College of Arts and Humanities, is the 2026 winner of the Booker Worthen Literary Prize from the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS).
The Booker Worthen Literary Prize was established in 1999. It is awarded each year to the best work, fiction or non-fiction, by an author living in central Arkansas. It is named in honor of William Booker Worthen, who served on the CALS Board of Trustees for more than 20 years.
Past winners of the Booker Worthen Literary Prize include Dr. M. Diane Gleason (2018) and Dr. James Moses (2019), both of whom were members of the ATU faculty at the time of their recognition from CALS.
Cranor was selected for the 2026 award in recognition of “Mississippi Blue 42,” which he wrote and was published by Soho Crime in August 2025.
“Mississippi Blue 42” centers on an investigation by special agent Rae Johnson into what the publisher described as the “tangled web of a college football empire…and the bloody greed that fuels it.”
Soho Crime’s description goes on to state that “Mississippi Blue 42” provides “a hard and often hilarious look at the big-money world of college athletics.”
“Mississippi Blue 42” is available in paperback as of Aug. 25, 2026.
The novel was Cranor’s fourth in as many years. He also authored “Don’t Know Tough,” which was released in 2022 and won both the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel by an American author; “Ozark Dogs,” which was released in 2023 and was recognized by the New York Times, The Guardian, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and CrimeReads as one of the best novels in its category that year; and “Broiler,” which was released in 2024 and was one of 30 books selected to the long list for the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
The 2026-27 academic year is Cranor’s fourth as a member of the ATU faculty. He hosted aspiring writers for ATU Lit Fest on the Arkansas Tech campus in Russellville during the spring 2025 and spring 2026 semesters.
Learn more about “Mississippi Blue 42” at www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/778180/mississippi-blue-42-by-eli-cranor.
