2024 Festival Art Revealed!

“NO GOING HOME”

BY JOHN CALEB GRENN

Each year, the festival honors the work of an artist with Mississippi roots. This year, John Caleb Grenn was selected to create the 10th-anniversary

festival art, and we are pleased to present “No Going Home” as the 2024 official artwork. Commemorative posters and signed and numbered fine art prints will be available for purchase at the festival merchandise tent on September 14th.

“No Going Home”

When we are young, books are full of pictures. Suddenly (graphic novels aside), they’re gone. That’s harder on all of us than we realize, losing the illustrated aspect of reading a book. Growing up is hard enough on its own, isn’t it? Natasha Trethewey says in my favorite poem of hers: “You can get there from here, though there’s no going home.” We can’t go back to when books had pictures, can we?

This piece celebrates the childlike visual art of cartoons. It attempts to bring a bright feeling of carefree whimsy back to something already extraordinary, mostly focused on bringing those images to life with words. What would your favorite novel look like if it were a children’s book?

It’s also a celebration (and an abstract map of sorts) of Mississippi and the Mississippi Book Festival, which represents the best of all of us. It’s to honor as many artists and authors as possible in a meaningful way.

Books all stick with us in different ways: sometimes, a whole novel stands out, and other times, it’s just one character. Sometimes, it’s a quote or imagery painted with words; other times, it’s a poem or the cover art.

Some of the works represented here are represented by something, I think, obvious. We can easily share that symbol as a representation of the work. Others, you’d have to be inside my head or have read the book (or maybe even written it!) to know what represents one of these works to me.

Were each of us to attempt to illustrate our favorite novel, to bring back that childlike wonder of experiencing words and cartoons together, every book would look different. A conglomerate of multiple works like this is? Even more so. In that way, this work celebrates both the symbols we share as a group when we read a book and the personal, private things books allow us to have on our own. We can have all of that from words on a page! That’s magic. That’s books.

 

Join the Literary Lawn Party | 9.14.24 FREE and open to the public, the Mississippi Book Festival draws thousands to its annual “literary lawn party” held in and around the State Capitol Building each year. Since its debut in 2015, this non-profit has celebrated writing, reading, and our literary heritage, as well as connected readers with hundreds of contemporary authors.

John Caleb Grenn, a native of Hattiesburg, MS, holds degrees from The University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. An avid reader and reviewer of literary fiction, JC promotes authors and their stories while cultivating bookish community through his Instagram page @jcgrenn_reads, where he often features original artwork. He is a recurring reviewer of new literary fiction for the Mississippi Books Page featured in the Clarion Ledger and Hattiesburg American. He lives in Jackson, MS where he is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

“No Going Home”