Atlanta experimental writer Constance Collier-Mercado awarded prestigious Southern Fellowship
Updated at 09/04/24 at 2:05 p.m.
The nonprofit South Arts has named its 2024 Georgia Fellows in Literary Arts, awarding a coveted State Fellowship to Atlanta-based Constance Collier-Mercado, an experimental writer, poet, artist and culture worker.
Her grants will go to supporting her new work in fiction, where she investigates Black and Southern identity, mental health and the hero’s journey through a lens tinted with surrealism, Afro-futurism and folk vernacular. Collier-Mercado recently joined Lois Reitzes on City Lights to discuss the award and her work.
According to Collier-Mercado, the term “experimental writer” encompasses the rest of her titles. “My fiction draws from my experience with poetry. My fiction tries to paint a very visceral picture drawing from the way that I am also a visual artist, ” she said. “And I’m always weaving in very specific niche cultural references.”
The submission that won Collier-Mercado a Fellowship comes from a novel that she is currently writing that follows the life of a teenage girl who begins to experience the symptoms of schizophrenia as she transitions into adulthood. Collier-Mercado explained on City Lights that the girl “hearing voices that she believes are calling her to a hero’s journey.”
“As she grows into adulthood and different life changes happen in her family, she has to make a choice whether or not to focus on her mental health or to follow these voices on the mission that she believes they are calling her to,” Collier-Mercado said.
The book does not yet have a release date, but Collier-Mercado’s extensive body of work can be found at constancesherese.com.
Correction: This story has been updated to note that the Southern Prize has not yet been awarded to any of the fellows. The announcement will take place next week at the Mississippi Book Festival.
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