In 2022, Catherine Pierce was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Pierce’s project, The Mississippi Young Writers Poetry Festival, will be a day-long celebration of poetry that will serve as the culmination of a statewide poetry-writing initiative. In collaboration with the Mississippi Center for the Book, Pierce will distribute a poem prompt to all K–12 schools across the state, along with resources to help teachers incorporate the prompt into classes. Schools will select poems from each grade and submit them to a panel of Mississippi poets, who will select statewide winners. All school-level winners will be invited to the Mississippi Young Writers Poetry Festival, which will include a reading by the winners, writing workshops for different ages, a keynote by a poet, and an anthology, given to each attendee, featuring the work of student writers.