Arkansas non-fiction writer Jay Jennings is the recipient of the 2023 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 former Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The $5,000 prize makes it one of the state’s most lucrative as well as prestigious literary awards. Eligibility requires an Arkansas connection.
Jennings will be honored at a special award ceremony in October.
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, now $5,000, has been handed out to 38 poets, novelists, non-fiction writers and playwrights.
Little Rock poet Jo McDougall, the recipient of the 2000 recipient of the Porter Prize and 2018’s Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement, notified Jennings of his award.
“When I saw Jo McDougall’s name pop up on my phone, I was very happy because I hadn’t heard from her in a while and I always love to talk with her,” said Jennings. “She’s a wonderful poet and memoirist. Then when she told me I had won the Porter Prize, I was surprised and even shocked. I had never expected that my name might be added to a lineup of so many writers I admire. It’s the highest honor an Arkansas writer can receive, and to say I’m humbled is a massive understatement.”
Born in Little Rock, Jay Jennings worked for two decades in New York as a writer and editor for magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Tennis, Time Out New York, Artforum, and the New York Times. His Carry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City (Rodale, 2010), is about the Little Rock Central High School football team fifty years after the 1957 integration crisis. Jennings has also published humor, journalism, memoir, book reviews, and other writing in national newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, including the New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, Gravy, the Lowbrow Reader, and the Oxford American, where he was an editor from 2015 to 2021. His most recent editing project is Charles Portis: Collected Works from the Library of America, out in April 2023. It was named Book of the Year for 2012 by Books & Culture, and the New York Times Book Review called it “a thoughtfully composed selection of published work spiced with rare and fresh material.” Jennings lives with his wife and daughter in Little Rock.
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Photo: Jay Jennings
Photo credit: Bill Westmoreland.