Walker, Frank X
(born: 1961)Frank X Walker, born in Danville, KY, is a visual artist, poet, author, educator, and motivator. He's the founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, editor of Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium, and author of Affrilachia and Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York. He has given over 250 poetry readings, including readings at the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, Northern Ireland, and in Santiago, Cuba. He has received many awards, appeared on television and heard on the radio; and he was the first writer from Kentucky to be featured on NPR's This I Believe. [Additional books by Frank X Waker are listed on his website.]
Walker was director of the Kentucky Governor's School for the ARTS, 1998-2004, leaving that position to become an English professor at Eastern Kentucky University. He has also been a visiting professor at Transylvania University. His teaching experience includes writing workshops at various locations and writing classes at the university level, including at the University of Louisville and the University of Minnesota.
Walker is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Spalding University, and he received an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Kentucky and an honorary Doctor of Letters from Transylvania University.
In 2010, Frank X. Walker joined the University of Kentucky Department of English and in 2011 was named director of both the African American Studies & Research Program and the Africana Studies Program at UK. He is now the Director of the Department's MFA Program.
In 2013, Frank X Walker was named Kentucky Poet Laureate [source: M. Meehan,"Lexington writer Frank X Walker named Kentucky poet laureate," Lexington Herald-Leader, 2/15/2013, p. A3]. At the age of 51, he is the youngest to be named the state's poet laureate and is also the first African American to receive the honor.
For more see the Frank X Walker website and The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry, by N. Frankovich and D. Larzelere; and for more about his academic work and publications, see the English Department at the University of Kentucky website.
Hear Frank X Walker read and speak at Kentucky Arts and Letters Day 2019 on YouTube; and Frank X Walker: Affrilachian Poet | Snapshot Bio -- Creative Lexington on YouTube.
