elcome to the Mississippi Writers Room and Collection.

On Friday, May 31, 1991, the Eudora Welty Library, part of the Jackson/Hinds Library System, opened a new chapter in Mississippi history with the presentation of the first-ever Mississippi Writers Room.

The Mississippi Writers Room and Collection, a multi-purpose pavilion located on the first floor, is a tribute to the state's wealth of writers, playwrights and poets who have called this place home.

THE PURPOSE of this project is twofold: To present information regarding this distinguished group of writers and to encourage you to take home for your reading pleasure books by or about Mississippi authors that are included in the circulating collection lining the shelves outside this pavilion. You may also choose films, movies, interviews, documentaries and audio tapes by or about Mississippians from a collection of tapes available for circulation on the second floor of the Eudora Welty Library-Audio Visual Department.

More extensive biographical data about Mississippi's wealth of novelists, dramatists, poets, essayists, critics and historians can be found in the writer portfolios located in this room. The portfolios are a continuing project of the Jackson/Hinds Library System.

We encourage you to bring to our attention any writers who should be included in the portfolio collection.

SELF-GUIDED TOURS of this facility are welcomed during regular hours for the Eudora Welty Library. Further information may be obtained by calling the Welty Ref. department at 601-968-5809.

The Jackson Friends of the Library are in the process of updating the Mississippi Writer's Room. If you are intrested in joining the Mississippi Writer's Room Guild, please complete an application form and mail it to the Jackson Friends of the Library.