Frank X Walker

Frank X Walker is the author of several poetry collections, including Load in Nine Times (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award and nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and A is for Affrilachia (The University Press of Kentucky, 2023).

Walker’s other honors include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, as well as fellowships and residences from the Black Caucus American Library Association, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Kentucky Arts Council. In 2020, Walker received the Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University, Spalding University, and Centre College.

Walker is the founding editor of pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He served as the poet laureate of Kentucky from 2013 to 2014 and was the first African American writer to be named to the post. Walker is a professor of English and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky. A native of Danville, Kentucky, he lives in Lexington.