Mississippi Native: Ellen Morris Prewitt
"I was born into community with family and friends who have been with me through every Mississippi iteration."
What does it mean to call Mississippi home? Why do people choose to leave or live in this weird, wonderful, and sometimes infuriating place? Author Ellen Morris Prewitt has been leaving and returning to Mississippi her whole life. She now splits her time between New Orleans, Memphis, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where she’s cultivated a writing community centered around the workshops she leads as writer-in-residence at 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis. On April 1, Ellen’s debut literary fantasy novel, When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women, will be released. It’s “a Mississippi story set in New Orleans that features my ancestral grannies…exaggerated a bit.” Today Ellen reveals the versions of Mississippi she’s come to know over the years, including the one she’s part of today.
Where are you from?
My mother left Denver, Colorado, to give birth to me in her hometown of Jackson so I could say I was from Mississippi. I am from Jackson, Mississippi.
Why did you leave Mississippi? Where did you go?
I have been leaving and returning to Mississippi all my life. When I was three, my Daddy Joe was killed by a train, and my family moved from Denver back to Jackson, where I lived for the next ten years. Halfway through my seventh grade, Mother remarried and we moved to Charlotte. I spent my middle growing-up years in North Carolina and Virginia and, after law school, returned (again) to Jackson to practice law. Nineteen years later, my own re-marriage took me to Memphis. In 2015, we built a beach house in Waveland, and I once more returned. Like I said, leaving and returning and returning and leaving….
I have grieved for Mississippi every time I’ve left.
Why did you return to Mississippi?
This most recent time, my husband and I were looking for a place our family could gather from New Orleans and Memphis. When we drove down Beach Boulevard away from Bay St. Louis into Waveland, it was as if I had driven back in time. Intellectually, I knew why the beach was so “undeveloped:” a horrendous storm had wiped it clean, but it felt like the Coast of my childhood. I never thought I would again have a house in Mississippi, but I do.
Was the Mississippi you returned to the same one you had left?
Nope, never was. The city I left in 1969 was a stepped-on ant hill of white flight from school desegregation. When I returned in the early 1980s, the state was beginning to reckon with its past, prosecuting old racists and opening the Sovereignty Commission files. When I left in the early 2000s, that era seemed to be coming to a close, as the first vote to change the flag failed. When I returned in 2015, it was to a Coast community where “All Are Welcome” signs designed by artist Ann Madden dotted shop windows in response to the anti-LGBTQ bill. People tend to see Mississippi as set in concrete, but no place ever is.
Home is where place and people combine to weave love. I need both, the sense of place and the presence—even if spectral—of those I love.
What does home mean to you?
Home is where place and people combine to weave love. I need both, the sense of place and the presence—even if spectral—of those I love. It can be inherited (like Jackson or Ocean Isle Beach where my North Carolina family has held reunions for over fifty years) or created, like I did with Memphis (New Orleans is birthing itself into my home; it takes longer here ‘cause the rules are different.) Once a place becomes home, it remains home for me, even as grief taints its loss.
How does Mississippi fit into that definition?
My Jackson home is my grandparent’s farm on Spring Ridge Road and my Bigmama’s double-balconied house in downtown Jackson and my Belhaven neighborhood where we played “Tiger, Tiger” in the night and the firms were I practiced law and Capitol Street where I paraded on St. Paddy’s Day and Cedar Lawn where Daddy Joe is buried. And now it’s my family creating a home at the beach, camping on Cat Island, floating the Jourdan River, eating supper on the screened porch, riding the golf cart to get ice cream. I have grieved for Mississippi every time I’ve left.
How have you cultivated community in Mississippi?
I was born into community with family and friends who have been with me through every Mississippi iteration. This time around, I fell into it when Rachel Dangermond invited me to be Writer-in-Residence at 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis. The Hall is an iconic Blues site where The Writing Room meets every second Saturday to write together for three hours from prompts I offer. Later, Alisha Johnson Perry and I started a Contemplative Writing Group whose community stretches across the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Ocean Springs—we meet weekly on Zoom and hold in-person gatherings, with our next one on Ship Island. I also keep up with what’s happening in the Mississippi writing community through Professor C. Liegh McInnis’s fabulous Psychedelic Literature newsletter.
Another major community for me has been the Mississippi Episcopal Diocese Racial Reconciliation Task Force. We led Days of Dialogue around the state and worked together to help erect a historical maker in Vicksburg honoring Sheriff Peter Crosby, the first African American sheriff of Warren County. I was specifically involved in that effort because my ancestor was one of the perpetrators of the Vicksburg Massacres that ousted Sheriff Crosby from office and afterwards rampaged through the county, killing innocent Black Mississippians, which is a whole story.
I was raised by an iconoclastic mother in what historians have called the closest thing to a fascist state America has ever experienced. This gave me a deep-boned, knee-jerk antipathy to dominate groups.
Who are the people who have made you feel rooted here?
Surely it’s those dead and alive who hold those roots in the soil for me. My Mississippi family and long-term friends, cousins and godchild and sister and brother-in-law and so many others, including the new people in my life—writers and activists and those striving to bring us all together in love. But my Bigmama is still there in the downtown Jackson house and Mamo is still on the farm feeding the cows and Mother is still in the Belhaven house she bought with her own money and my childhood friends are still walking me to Power School and I’m still practicing law and I’m still watching my Uncle Hebron enjoy his purple martin houses and I am still that skinny-legged girl who never knew she would live anywhere but Mississippi.
What’s the weirdest question or assumption you’ve encountered about Mississippi (or about you as a Mississippian) by someone who’s never been here?
Lord, when I was practicing law in Jackson, I often did the recruiting trips to the Southeast law schools. I won’t say which school, but in one interview a woman said she wanted to practice corporate law but didn’t know if we had corporations in Mississippi. Otherwise, it’s got to be white folks who say “Mississippi” and mean only white Mississippians, failing to realize they’ve defined all the Black folks out of the state.
How has living in Mississippi affected your identity and your life’s path?
I was raised by an iconoclastic mother in what historians have called the closest thing to a fascist state America has ever experienced. This gave me a deep-boned, knee-jerk antipathy to dominate groups. I will side with the underdog until they begin to ascend and oppress, then I’m switching sides. I hate peer pressure, bullying, judging, conformity, group think, and enforcing. It has also given me that double reality of constantly holding something I love up to inspection.
What is something that you’ve learned about Mississippi only by living here? In what ways has living in Mississippi lived up to your expectations?
That people can be the most good-hearted, giving, loving people, until you violate racial or other social mores. If I hadn’t lived here for decades, I might not look beyond the stereotypes to see the good. If I hadn’t lived away, I might not understand how often caring is conditioned on compliance with those mores. As to expectations, I put up an Episcopal shield in my garden in Waveland. The shield has a quadrant featuring a rainbow flag in support of the LGBTQ community. I bought the shield in metal—if someone was going to tear it down, they were gonna have to mean it. It hasn’t been touched.
From the “Mississippi Plan” of Reconstruction to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade to everything new in American literature—we are an inflection point that exports change. It’s just not always the change everyone wants.
Do you still think about moving away someday? Does a sense of duty keep you rooted here? Do you have a “tipping point”?
Ha, ha—I’ve moved away so many times, I can’t say I won’t again. In the meantime, I’m here because I want to be, no sense of duty in it, never has been. If I leave now, it will be because I age out of the energy it takes to live in more than one place at a time.
What do you wish the rest of the country understood about Mississippi?
The rest of the country considers Mississippi an outlier, an aberration. It’s not. From the “Mississippi Plan” of Reconstruction to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade to everything new in American literature—we are an inflection point that exports change. It’s just not always the change everyone wants.
Do you have a favorite Mississippi writer, artist, or musician who you think everyone needs to know about? Or is there a Mississippi change-maker who you think everyone needs to know about?
I want everyone to know about 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis. The Hall is a Rolling Stone magazine “Must See Venue.” Go to the website—100menhall.com— and sign up for the newsletter to get notices on everything Rachel Dangermond has going on. Blues brunches, live music, film screenings, Booker Fest, Santa visits, book signings, craft markets. Or visit in person so you can read the list of musicians who’ve played the Hall—it will blow your mind.
If you had one billion dollars to invest in Mississippi, how would you spend your money?
I’d set up a fund for Civil Rights reparations, and start by paying back all the taxes collected from Black Mississippians when they didn’t have equal access to public parks, public zoos, public beaches, public libraries, public hospitals, public buses, public orphanages, public nursing homes, public mental health facilities, public lakes like the one where I learned to water ski…If that sounds impossible, well, there you have it.
What or who do you want to shamelessly promote? (It can absolutely be a project you’re working on, or something you are involved in.)
I’m putting together a collection of writings that center my family. One is my literary fantasy coming out in April, When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women (Literary Wanderlust). It’s a Mississippi story set in New Orleans that features my ancestral grannies…exaggerated a bit. The other is a memoir I’m working on, Loving My Hateful Ancestors: A Public Struggle to Accept My Family’s Hand in History. Several excerpts from the memoir have been published, including “Granddaughter of the Instigator,” which made Salvation South’s “best of” list for 2025, receiving an Honorable Mention.
Ellen Morris Prewitt is an award-winning author who weaves her Southern life—and family secrets—into her writing. Her stories have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize; one received a Special Mention. A former lawyer, she’s Writer-in-Residence at 100 Men Hall, an iconic Mississippi Blues site. Her essays, short stories, radio commentaries, and magazine articles have been extensively published, including in Image, Brevity, Porchlight, Texas Review, Southern Women’s Review, Gulf Coast, Fourth Genre, Unleash Lit, Barrelhouse, Arkansas Review, The Pinch, storySouth, and EAP the Magazine. For eight years, she led a weekly writing group of Memphians experiencing homelessness. She edited Writing Our Way Home: A Group Journey Out of Homelessness (Nautilus Press) and authored Making Crosses (Paraclete Press), two self-published novels, a bespoke hand-bound novel, a writing group handbook, and an award-winning audio short story collection whose stories have been downloaded over 50,000 times. When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women (Literary Wanderlust, 2026) is her first traditionally-published novel. She splits her time between Memphis, the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans where she (and her husband and her dog…and her house) can frequently be found in costume.
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How lucky are we to have Ellen as our writer in residence at 100 Men Hall? I eagerly await every second Saturday when I have no idea how Ellen will guide us group of writers - and I never know what I will write - and anyone is welcome to join this wonderful community. Thanks Lauren for Rooted!
Ellen Morris Prewitt is a creative dedicated to not allowing the rest of America to wash their hands of American evil by making Mississippi the sole scapegoat and dumping ground for all things evil, which is seen when she states, "From the 'Mississippi Plan' of Reconstruction to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade to everything new in American literature—we are an inflection point that exports change." Moreover, her essays and fiction are bookends or supplements that aid in the investigative work necessary to unravel just how tangled white supremacy and sexism are in the entire fabric of American history and culture.