Arkansas achievers

■ Arkansas fiction writer Mark Barr is the recipient of the 2022 Porter Fund Literary Prize. The Porter Prize is presented annually to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition. Barr will be honored at an award ceremony with a reception on Oct. 13 at the Main Library’s Darragh Center in downtown Little Rock. The event is free and open to the public. Barr’s debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), was awarded the 2019 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction and the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Discovery Prize in Fiction. The Porter Prize was founded in 1984 by novelist Jack Butler and novelist and lawyer Phil McMath to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel. Butler and McMath were students of Kimpel, noted professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. At

Kimpel’s request, the prize is named in honor of Kimpel’s mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter. The annual prize, now $5,000, has been handed out to 38 poets, novelists, non-fiction writers and playwrights.

■ University of Arkansas, Fayetteville professor Mahmoud Moradi, whose research focuses on computational simulations of coronavirus and other diseases, has received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health. Outstanding Investigator Awards support individual scientists who have demonstrated outstanding research accomplishments and seminal contributions to their field. The awards can be used for any project of the researcher’s choice that fits within the mission of the granting institute. Moradi, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the

Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, will receive $1.6 million over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Moradi will use these funds to develop, tailor and fine-tune enhanced sampling and path-finding algorithms to address important biological and biomedical questions.

Arkansas Achievers is an opportunity to give recognition to Arkansans for their achievements. Civilian and military achievements are accepted.

Please follow these guidelines: 1) Must be an Arkansan or have graduated from a school in Arkansas.

2) Received an award, scholarship, medal or promotion. Pageants, deans’ lists, graduations or military enlistments are not accepted.

No photographs please.

To submit an Achiever, email us at news@arkansasonline.com with the words“Arkansas Achievers”in the subject line.