The USM Authors Academy is a series of creative writing camps hosted by the Southern Miss Center for Writers.

USM has a history of offering summer creative camps. Our most recent series is the Young Authors Academy for kids, which was inaugurated in summer 2022. Since then, we’ve developed the Young Authors Academy curriculum and expanded our offerings to adult writers as well.

The Center for Writers supports the camp by training creative writing graduate students to be counselors who lead writing activities and workshops. Our flagship journal, The Mississippi Review, supports design and production of the annual camp anthologies. The current coordinator of the Young Authors Academy is Rachael Fowler. The current coordinator of the Virtual Workshop for adults is Olivia Clare Friedman.