JBU professor is recipient of $50,000 prize

Jessica Hooten Wilson, an associate professor of literature at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, has won a $50,000 prize awarded to recognize early accomplishment and potential in the humanities.

Wilson, 37, is the winner of the 2019 Hiett Prize in the Humanities, given out by the nonprofit Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

“It has always been a passion of mine to be able to speak about the things that are beautiful and good and true, and that’s what I have spent my life doing,” said Wilson, a lecturer at various conferences and public events.

She praised teachers who have shown her the way, including Louise Cowan, a longtime University of Dallas professor and founding fellow of the Dallas Institute who died in 2015.

“They’re, in a sense, handing me that mantle to continue,” Wilson said of the honor, which stipulates that the work of award recipients must have a “significant” public component.

The author of three books of literary criticism, Wilson is preparing for publication unfinished material by Flannery O’Connor, the renowned writer known for stories set in the rural South who died at age 39 in 1964. The work is being done through a commission with the O’Connor estate, Wilson said.

Wilson accepted a faculty appointment at John Brown University in 2013.

Learning of the honor was “a life-changing moment in our status,” Wilson said, crediting her husband, Jonathon, with support as they raise three young children.