The Poet and the Poem
2022-23 Series

Featured Frank X Walker

Click here for Frank X Walker podcast.mp3

Multidisciplinary artist and educator, Frank X Walker, is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. Walker is the author of the children's book, A is for Affrilachia, and eleven collections of poetry, including his most recent, Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems, and Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term "Affrilachia" and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He serves as Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

---