The grin on best-selling author Angie Thomas’s face could not have been bigger. The Zoom call, surprising Owen Jarvis with news he had won the full-ride scholarship to Belhaven University named in Thomas’ honor, was a giddy secret that was hers to share.

“Sometimes when it happens, I feel like Oprah when she gave out the cars,” a gleeful Thomas said of informing the winner. For the Young Adult author and Jackson native, now living in Atlanta, the activity falls right in line with her stories’ focus on young people as they find their own voice and the power it can hold.

Thomas, a 2011 Belhaven grad, is the author of New York Times bestselling novels “The Hate U Give” and “On the Come Up” (both made into major motion pictures), “Concrete Rose” and  “Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy.”

The scholarship in her name began in 2020, established by Belhaven University to support aspiring writers as they pursue dreams of authorship. “To watch in real time, the burden lift off of them, is incredible because, you know, we talk about education, but we don’t talk enough about the cost of education, and the stress and the burden of it,” Thomas said, noting that several winners were the first in their families to attend college.

She attended Belhaven on partial scholarship, but still had to take out student loans because of family financial struggles. “My mom was a full-time caregiver to my grandmother, and so money was tight at the time. There were plenty of times where I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for gas … much less books and all of those things. So, by the grace of God, I was able to get my education and now to know that that’s a burden that these future creative writing graduates won’t have — that’s incredible to me, and to know that it was done in my honor is even more incredible.”

Jarvis, of Pelham, Alabama, is the fifth recipient of the Angie Thomas Writers Scholarship. While only one is awarded annually, other applicants receive partial scholarships.  “They kind of set me up really, really good,” he said with a sheepish chuckle about the surprise. He thought the call was a finalist interview, right up to the moment Thomas chimed in with congratulations. “I was blown away.”

He grew up in south Florida and moved to Alabama as a teen. His writing focus took hold the summer between freshman and sophomore years in high school, after a friend’s death. “It was kind of a big shock in my life, and the way I dealt with the grief was writing poetry,” he said, then moving on to other forms. A self-described fantasy writer, he also delves into sci-fi, dystopian stories and more.

“There’s so many crazy things in the world today that you can just look at and say, ‘Wow, that would be really interesting to make it a little more extreme.’ It’s not peering into the future, but it’s sort of, almost, a ‘What if?’” he said.

The first student awarded the scholarship, Imani Skipwith of Jackson, graduated in April 2024. Now pursuing her master’s degree at Jackson State University, she is also working on a poetry collection and  exploring creative nonfiction. “It just opened a door,” she said of the scholarship that made college more accessible. “It’s a reminder, for me, that I’m on the right path.”

Skipwith is an avid reader turned writer. “I read a lot, but I didn’t see a lot of characters that looked like me. And, if they did look like me, they were the supporting characters of white people. … They weren’t representative of me.” Later, her interest expanded into the mental health of her community, and highlighting needed change.

“I like to say that I write for the eldest daughter,” said Skipwith, whose own sister is about a decade younger. “In a sense, I kind of helped raise her. … There is a lot that I experienced, being an eldest daughter, and being a Black eldest daughter, that I felt like I should share, for guidance.”

Thomas pulls from her own experience for advice and encouragement for scholarship students. “I always remind them that they earned this, and they deserve it,” the author said. “One thing I’ve noticed about us writers — we have a lot of doubts, and all of us, at one point or another, struggle with imposter syndrome and we have these moments, even when we’ve seen success, where we’re like, ‘Did I really?’ ‘Am I that good?’

“I always want them to know that they deserved it, and I always, too, want to remind them that this is a journey,” she said. The university’s creative writing program, founded and led by Randall Smith, can help hone young writers’ gifts.

“Seeing these young people come in, finding their voices through the program, and also seeing such a diversity in the voices is incredible. It’s much more diverse now,” she said, than when she was the only Black student in the program. “Not just racial diversity, but diversity in the voices and the types of stories young people are telling, and the socioeconomic backgrounds that are now coming to the program, and it’s a great place to nurture that.”

Next up from Thomas is the second book in her Nic Blake series for younger readers, due out this fall, “It’s a fantasy series that partially takes place in Jackson, which is fun to be able to do, to bring a little magic to Jackson because Jackson sure could use it.”

Though she cannot talk now about her next Young Adult book in progress, “I think that fans of ‘The Hate U Give’ will be happy once this one is announced,” she said.

Work on movie and TV scripts continues.

Scholarship involvement is a good fit for a writer who sets stories, targets audiences and puts her belief in the younger set. “I’ve, in a lot of ways, given up on older generations for fixing and changing,” Thomas said, with a characteristically youthful laugh. “Day by day, my hope in older generations is just dying out little by little. And so, I see young people, obviously as the future, but as the hope.

“What I’m doing, hopefully, is an investment in the future, and seeing a world more like the one I would love for us to have right now.”

She wants more young people to recognize and use their power. “I look at every movement in this country, specifically, in which true change was achieved and usually young people were either at the forefront of it, or they were the motor behind it.

“If I’m the one who wants to see change in the world, I think the best way to do that is to invest in young people. Invest in them through the stories that I tell. Invest in them through the opportunities that I can provide, and just give them mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors.” Books, films — literature, period — can do that, she said.

“They can show young people themselves, and help them see the beauty in themselves, the power in themselves, or they can show young people lives unlike their own situations and … to give them a window into others’ lives. Or, they can be a sliding glass door that opens up opportunities for them to see a wider world.

“One of the big issues we have right now is that we have people in power who have a very limited worldview.

“If we want change, we have to make sure we’re giving them a worldview that is beyond just their little pocket of the world, so that they can understand the world, and they can understand others better. And so, honestly, we can at least have some empathy again.”