Recent Honors/Awards
selected
2024
Anne Spencer Fellow from Virginia Creative Center for the Arts
Black Woman in Food Award (amplifier)
Writing Freedom Fellowship from Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation
Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers and Mentoring Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts
2023
Bush Holbrook Endowed Professor of English
University Research Professor
Kaleidoscope Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction, C.T. and Octavia Vivian Museum and Archives
2022
Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship.
Sundell Residency for Special Assistants, Yaddo Foundation
English Department Ellen Rosenman Distinguished Faculty Award
Working Class Studies Association Tillie Olsen Award
UK Arts & Sciences Award for the Promotion of Diversity or Inclusion
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Award-Poetry for Perfect Black,
The Birds of Opulence named a Black History Month read by Elle Magazine Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature Poetry Finalist
Hedgebrook Writer in Residence
2021
Kentucky Poet Laureate
O. Henry Award
Thomas D. Clark Medallion Book Award,
Perfect Black: named one of four poetry books to read by The New York Times Book Review (August 14, 2021) and named one of the most exciting and necessary collections of poetry of 2021 by Ms Magazine, Kentucky Reads Book Choice
2020
United States Artists Fellow sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation
Yaddo Fellowship
Hermitage Residency
Agrarian League Literary Book Selection
2019
Yaddo Fellowship
Appalachian Heritage Award
Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts
Hermitage Residency
Finalist John Dos Passos Prize
One Book/One Read West Virginia
2018
Vermont Studio Center
Open Canon Book Club pick
Opal Moore Writer-in-Residence,
One Book/One Read Western Kentucky Community and Technical College
2017
Judy Gaines Young Award
The Weatherford Award for Appalachian Fiction
Nominated for USA Artists Fellowship
Writing Rhetoric & Digital Studies Community Writing Award
2016
Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Appalachian Book of the Year
Southerner of the Year by Southern Living Magazine