LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 15, 2025) — Frank X Walker, professor of English and African American and Africana Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, has been awarded the 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry for his compelling collection, “Load in Nine Times: Poems.”
The award winners were announced live at the PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony May 8 at The Town Hall in New York City, hosted by Emmy Award-winning journalist Tamron Hall.
The 2025 Literary Awards conferred nearly $350,000 to writers and translators. Spanning fiction, poetry, essay, translation and more, these books are dynamic, diverse and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence.
“Load in Nine Times” delves into the rich narratives of Black Kentuckians — weaving historical artifacts and personal histories into poignant verse. The collection challenges prevailing perceptions of Kentucky’s history by offering a nuanced exploration of identity and heritage.
“Winning the PEN Award is another opportunity to showcase historical poetry as a legitimate genre,” Walker said. “Additionally, this national stage puts another feather in the cap of a Creative Writing program — chock full of talented teachers and students adding to our legacy as one of the strongest MFA programs in the country.”
About “Load in Nine Times: Poems”
For decades, Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers — including his own ancestors — who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation.
Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, Walker braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops with their family members, as well as slave owners and prominent historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglas and Margaret Garner.
Imbued with atmospheric imagery, these persona poems and more “[clarify] not only the inextricable value of Black life and labor to the building of America, but the terrible price they were forced to pay in producing that labor” (Khadijah Queen). “How do you un-orphan a people?” Walker asks. “How do you pick up / shattered black porcelain and make / a new set of dishes fit to eat off?”
While carefully attuned to the heartbreak and horrors of war, Walker’s poems pay equal care to the pride, perseverance and triumphs of their speakers. Evoking the formerly enslaved General Charles Young, Walker hums: “I am America’s promise, my mother’s song, / and the reason my father had every right to dream.”
Expansive and intimate, “Load in Nine Times” is a resounding ode to the powerful ties of individual and cultural ancestry by an indelible voice in American poetry.
About the author
A native of Danville, Kentucky, Frank X Walker is the first Black writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate (2013-15).
He has published 13 collections of poetry, including “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.
Walker is also the author of “Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York,” winner of the 2004 Lillian Smith Book Award, and “Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride,” which he adapted for stage — earning him the Paul Green Foundation Playwrights Fellowship Award.
His poetry was also dramatized for the 2016 Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and staged by Message Theater for the 2015 Breeders Cup Festival. A lover of comics, Walker curated “We Wear the Mask: Black Superheroes through the Ages,” an exhibit of his personal collection of action figures, comics and related memorabilia at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center in 2015; he reprised the exhibit in 2018 at Purdue University and Western Carolina University.
Published in 2023, Walker’s children’s book, “A is for Affrilachia” (published in 2023 by University Press of Kentucky) was the grand prize winner of the 2023 Black Authors Matter Children’s Book Awards.
Walker recently returned to the world of visual art with a collection of new and early multimedia works, “Black Star Seed: When Mi Cyaan Find Di Words,” which was on exhibit at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington.
Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets, subsequently publishing the much-celebrated eponymous collection. His honors also 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 with 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. The recipient of honorary doctorates from University of Kentucky, Transylvania University, Spalding University and Centre College, Walker is the founding editor of “pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture.”
Walker is also a two-time NAACP Image Award finalist. Earlier this year, “Load in Nine Times” was nominated in the category of “Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry.”
View the full list of PEN/Voelcker Award winners on the website.