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Transcript

Affrilachians in the Archive with Poet Frank X Walker

The work and legacy of the Affrilachian Poets Collective with the winner of the 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

In 1991 poet Frank X Walker created a word that became a movement. After having a rich conversation about his new collection, Load in Nine Times (Liveright 2024) (winner of the 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry) for the New Books Network, we came here to talk about Professor X’s more than 30 year commitment to artists of color in the Appalachian region.

In this video we reference:

Coal Black Voices, a documentary about the Affrilachian Poets Collective.

The Louisville Review which will, in fall 2026, publish an Affrilachian Poets anniversary edition.

Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, edited by Bianca Lynne Spriggs and Jeremy Paden, published by the University Press of Kentucky (2018).

Callaloo Volume 42, Number 1, Winter 2024 Special Issue: Black Appalachia.

pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture

The Appalachian Studies Association annual conference.

Gurney Norman, Kinfolks (Gnomon Press 1977).