2020 Porter Fund Literary Prize Awarded to Geffrey Davis

Arkansas poet Geffrey Davis is the recipient of the 2020 Porter Fund Literary Prize. The Porter Prize is presented annually to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition. Past winners of the Porter Prize include Mara Leveritt, Morris Arnold, Kevin Brockmeier and Jo McDougall, the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The $2,000 prize makes it one of the state’s most lucrative as well as prestigious literary awards. Eligibility requires an Arkansas connection.

Davis will be honored in a special virtual award ceremony on Zoom that begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 22.

The Porter Prize was founded in 1984 by novelist Jack Butler and novelist and lawyer Phil McMath to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel. Butler and McMath were students of Kimpel, noted professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. At Kimpel’s request, the prize is named in honor of Kimpel’s mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter. The annual prize, $2,000, has been given to 35 poets, novelists, non-fiction writers and playwrights.

Davis was notified of his award by Little Rock poet Sandy Longhorn, the 2016 recipient of the Porter Prize.

Geffrey Davis is the author of Night Angler (BOA Editions 2019), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Revising the Storm (BOA Editions 2014), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He also coauthored the chapbook Begotten (URB Books, 2016) with poet F. Douglas Brown. Named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Davis has received the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, and the Wabash Prize for Poetry, as well as fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He was also awarded a Public Engagement Fellowship from the Whiting Foundation to support his involvement with The Prison Story Project, which strives to empower incarcerated men and women in Arkansas to tell their stories through writing. His work has been published in Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, New England Review, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nimrod, PBS NewsHour, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Davis teaches with the University of Arkansas's Program in Creative Writing & Translation and with The Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program. He also serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.