Haines Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

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Posted on April 11, 2019

Alice Jackson

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The Alabama Library Association honored Carolyn Haines, a long-time assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama and an internationally recognized author, with its second Lifetime Achievement Award on Wednesday, April 3.

The first recipient was Birmingham native E.O. Wilson, a biologist, theorist, naturalist and author.

Haines, a native of Lucedale, Miss., said she was “deeply honored” to receive the award as she spoke at the association’s statewide convention at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear.

“Some people aspire to be bi-coastal, but I am far luckier to be the daughter of two states as I consider both Alabama and Mississippi my home,” Haines said.

The author was fiction director in the department of English and taught both undergraduate and graduate fiction writing classes before retirement. Years earlier, she worked in the University’s public relations office. Haines received her master’s degree in English from South.

Haines, who is a USA Today bestselling author, has published more than 80 books and won a number of writing awards, including the coveted Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. In 2018, the Mississippi Writers Guild awarded her its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Currently, she is writing the 21st book in her popular Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. In 2016, she started her own publishing company, KaliOka Press, where she works with a collaboration of writers who write the Trouble mystery series, featuring a black cat detective. The series will be released as audio books next month.

Haines, who is an animal advocate, also has a nonprofit foundation for animal rescue.

Her most recent novel is “Bone-A-Fied Trouble,” and the next Sarah Booth Delaney mystery, “Game of Bones,” will be released May 14.

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