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James Baker Hall Book Award
Accents Publishing in partnership with the James Baker Hall Foundation is pleased to announce the results for the James Baker Hall Book Award. The inaugural award recognizes an emerging author who hasn't yet published a full-length collection. We are grateful to all who sent their work and pleased with the high quality of the received manuscripts. Many thanks to our esteemed judge, award-winning poet Greg Pape for his thorough and considerate efforts.
The winner is George Wesley Houp with his manuscript Strung Out Along the Endless Branch.
George will receive a $3000 award from James Baker Hall Foundation and a publication from Accents Publishing.
We would like to recognize the following finalists:
You can hear the winner and the finalists read from their works on October first at 7 pm at the ELC Troutman Lectorium at Spalding University in Louisville.
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WINNER: George Wesley Houp
Wesley Houp was born and raised in High Bridge and Wilmore, Kentucky. Along with his father and brother, he farmed tobacco along the Kentucky River in southern Jessamine County for most of his life. He has a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and taught undergraduate and graduate English courses for over 20 years in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Tennessee in addition to serving as Writing Center Director at several universities. For the better part of the last decade, he has worked for Tennessee State Parks. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Black Warrior Review, Chattahoochee Review, Kentucky Poetry Review, and Wind Magazine. His scholarly work in literacy education and pedagogy has appeared in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Teaching English in the Two-Year College among others. He is also a blues musician with a special interest in early twentieth century acoustic blues and performs regularly with the "Galliniperious Consortium," a group of musicians who play old time jug, fiddle and blues tunes on the back of a '33 Ford BB flatbed. When he's not playing music, hanging out with his family, or wandering around the cedar forests of middle Tennessee, he prefers to retreat to the 100-acre wilderness inside the Daniel Boone National Forest on the Rockcastle River that he co-owns with three of his best friends. He currently lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with his wife, Laura and their daughter and son, Chloe and Henry.
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FINALIST: Zachary Johnson
Zachary Johnson is a pediatric nurse with a deep love for both caregiving and creative expression. As a parent of two, Zachary balances the demands of family life with a passion for writing poetry. Inspired by the serenity of nature, his work often explores themes of connection, healing, and the natural world.
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FINALIST: Elisabeth Jensen
Elisabeth Jensen is a forest therapy guide, life coach, and mother of three, living in Nicholasville, Kentucky. She spends almost every waking moment engaging with her three great loves: nature, humans, and creative self-expression. You can find her poetry at 100poems.substack.com.
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FINALIST: Melissa Helton
Melissa Helton's work has appeared in Shenandoah, Still: The Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and more. Her chapbooks include Inertia: A Study, and Hewn. She is editor of Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky, and Untelling, the literary and arts magazine of Hindman Settlement School, where she is Literary Arts Director.
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The James Baker Hall Foundation
The mission of the James Baker Hall Foundation is to celebrate the legacy of our great artistic heritage by providing direct support to Kentucky's literary and visual creatives.
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