2026 Katherine Newman Best Essay Award

An essay by Miriam Thaggert, professor, titled “Literary Reparation: Lists, Till and The Trees,” received one of two 2026 Katherine Newman Best Essay Awards. The award honors outstanding scholarship published in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. Thaggert’s essay appeared in  the journal’s summer 2025 issue and examines Percival Everett's novel “The Trees” (2021), which imagines the ghost of Emmett Till returning to contemporary Mississippi to seek justice for his 1955 murder.