LitFest 2024: Black Poetry in Appalachia with Frank X Walker

Pittsburgh is the “Paris of Appalachia,” but what does it mean to be an Appalachian writer?

Frank X Walker, a faculty member of Cave Canem and a former Kentucky Poet Laureate, returns to the Alphabet City stage to discuss his work and life as an “Affrilachian” Poet. Frank is the author of the pathbreaking book of poems Affrilachia (2000), a classic of Appalachian and African-American literature. Frank created the word “Affrilachia” to help make visible the experience of African-Americans living in the rural and Appalachian South. The book is widely used in classrooms and is one of the foundational works of the Affrilachian Poets, a community of writers offering fresh ways to think about diversity in the Appalachian region and beyond.

At LitFest, we will celebrate the book launch of Load in Nine Times, a stirring new poetry collection in which Frank 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 slaveowners and prominent historical figures, including Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and Margaret Garner, into a wide-ranging series of “persona poems” imbued with atmospheric imagery and brimming with indomitable spirit. Evoking the pride and perseverance of 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.

This program will be moderated by fellow Affrilachian Poet and LitFest artist, Joy Priest.

You can pre-order your own copy of Frank’s book, Load in Nine Times, at City of Asylum Bookstore today OR purchase a copy at Frank’s program (two full days before its official release!)

Stick around after the program for a tour of our House Publications on Sampsonia Way! The tour groups will leave at 3pm for a 1 hour tour, giving attendees enough time to get settled when they return for the next program in our LitFest lineup.

About the Author:

The first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, Frank X Walker is Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he founded pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He has published eleven collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of a Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, which he adapted for stage. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker, a Danville native, coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. A Cave Canem fellow, his honors also include a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. His most recent collection is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.

About the Moderator:

Joy Priest, a fellow Affrilachian Poet, is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Nation, among others. She is an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diasporic Poetry on the faculty of Pitt’s MFA program and the Curator of Community Programs & Practice at its Center for African American Poetry & Poetics.