UK’s Frank X Walker finalist for 2025 NAACP Image Award
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 17, 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, can now add two-time NAACP Image Award finalist to his expansive and impressive list of accolades.
The former Kentucky Poet Laureate’s book of poetry, “Load in Nine Times: Poems,” is nominated in the category of “Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry.”
“I’m really proud of this new book and the nomination,” Walker said. “I’m even more excited this second time around. I didn’t know how big a deal it really was until I was sitting in the same room with Oprah and so many other shining examples of Black excellence.”
The NAACP Image Awards program highlights the achievements of people of color across television, music, literature and film, and the promotion of social justice through their creative endeavors.
On Jan. 7, the full list of nominees was announced in a special event. The theme for this year’s show is, “Our Stories, Our Culture, Our Excellence.” A host is yet to be announced, though Queen Latifah hosted the previous two ceremonies.
“We look forward to celebrating the brilliance of Black talent and creativity whose stories shape culture, ignite change and inspire generations,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “Through film, music, literature and more, their voices weave a rich tapestry that honors our heritage, celebrates our identity, and proves that storytelling is a powerful force for driving true progress.”
A few days after the NAACP Image Awards nominations were announced, Walker received another accolade when The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning chosen him as a living inductee of the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame class of 2025.
The public can now vote for the winners in select categories on the NAACP Image Awards’ official website. Voting closes on midnight ET Feb. 7. Non-televised winners will be recognized at the Creative Honors Ceremony on Friday, Feb. 21.
The 56th NAACP Image Awards airs live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium at 8 p.m. ET/PT Saturday, Feb. 22, on BET and CBS.
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 Walker is the first Black writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate (2013-2015).
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.”
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