Poets, playwrights, professors: Meet the 2025 inductees into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
They consider themselves friends, siblings, artistic twins of a sort.
So when Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X Walker found out they were being inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame the same year, the award became even more meaningful.
“We have gone through so much together,” Wilkinson said. “We’re not really brother and sister, but we have operated that way for decades. We’re both excited this is happening for us at the same time.”
Though they did not know each other as children, they grew up near each other in rural Casey County and Danville, two places that feature heavily in their works. They were founding members of the Affrilachian Poets, and steadily built their substantial literary careers. Now both in their early 60s, Wilkinson and Walker are both creative writing professors at the University of Kentucky with a constant stream of acclaimed projects.
Last year, Wilkinson published the award-winning memoir “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks,” and became editor of a new line of fiction at the University Press of Kentucky. Walker recently published his 17th book, a collection of poems unearthing newly discovered stories of Black families during the Civil War. The book, titled “Load in Nine Times,” was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
“I’m excited to be sharing this literary milestone with Crystal,” Walker said. “It’s been such a joy to witness her amazing and well-deserved success in so many different genres. It feels like we are starting the 35th anniversary of the Affrilachian Poets a year early!”
The Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame ceremony will be held on March 10 at 7 p.m. at the Kentucky Theatre. It’s free and open to the public.
Wilkinson and Walker will be joined there by the two other living inductees, playwright Naomi Wallace and academic historian Ron Eller. The late journalist and author David Dick will also be honored.
Wallace, 64 grew up in Prospect as the daughter and granddaughter of Louisville journalists, but now lives in England, and has found fame in theaters across the globe. She is a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and only the second American playwright (after Tennessee Williams) to have a play added to the permanent repertoire of the 300-year-old French National Theatre.
She’s also won an Obie Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Horton Foote Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for drama.
Her most famous play is “One Flea Spare,” about a wealthy couple and two intruders quarantined together in 17th century London during the bubonic plague. It had its American premiere at the Humana Festival of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1996.
“I grew up with a strong sense of bridging that which divides people, and not just because our farm straddled Jefferson and Oldham counties,” Wallace said in an email. “Whether it was the anti-Vietnam war or the Civil Rights movement, or the friends I had from both sides of the track, for me Kentucky meant a breaking down of barriers, speaking up for one another, staying loyal, staking your ground, being independent and resilient.
“It is this induction that matters more to me than almost any award I have received. Kentucky is always in me when I write, even when I am not writing directly about Kentucky. As a writer, my Kentucky sensibility and energy reject that which divides us — and I have tried to apply this to a wider world, whether that be 17th century England, the Gulf War or, more recently, the US-sponsored war on Gaza.”
Ron Eller is considered the father of Appalachian Studies, partly due to the publication of his book “Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945.” He taught history at the University of Kentucky for more than 30 years, was director of UK’s Appalachian Center for 15 years, and was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar. He chaired the Governor’s Kentucky Appalachian Task Force and was the first chair of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission.
Eller, who is already a member of the University of Kentucky Hall of Fame, said he was especially honored to be recognized by writers in a discipline that wasn’t ordinarily included.
“I’ve always emphasized writing to my students,” Eller said. “Good history is also good literature. I’ve always emphasized the writing side of my teaching.”
David Dick left Bourbon County to travel the world as an award-winning CBS News correspondent. After retirement, he returned to Kentucky with his wife, Lalie, where he became a sheep farmer, the founder of two weekly newspapers and a University of Kentucky journalism professor and department head. He also became an author, publishing 14 books that attracted loyal readers across Kentucky and beyond, including “The View From Plum Lick.”
Dick died in 2010.
“This will be a great celebration of some of Kentucky’s most accomplished writers,” said Tom Eblen, the Carnegie Center’s literary arts liaison. “All four living inductees plan to attend the induction ceremony, and I’m sure their remarks will be inspirational.”
The Carnegie Center created the Hall of Fame in 2012 to recognize outstanding writers with strong ties to Kentucky and to educate people about the state’s rich literary history and culture. Inductees are chosen by committees of writers and readers at the Carnegie Center and the Kentucky Arts Council.
For more information on the Hall of Fame and the inductees, go to https://carnegiecenterlex.org/kentucky-writers-hall-of-fame.
This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
