Poet and playwright Patricia Spears Jones will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in May from the Porter Fund, an organization supporting the literary arts in Arkansas.
Spears Jones, a native of Forrest City who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is the author of "The Beloved Community," "A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems" and three other collections. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Brooklyn Rail, The Ocean State Review, Ms. Muse and other outlets.
In 2023, Spears Jones was named State Poet of New York. She was also the recipient of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. She organizes the American Poets Congress, serves on the board of directors for The Poetry Project and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Black Earth Institute.
"I am glad to have my work as a poet, playwright, anthologist, and cultural activist appreciated in my home state by The Porter Fund," Spears Jones said in a press release. "What a gift to the state to have this focus on the literature of living writers especially when so much about reading, writing, and thinking is under assault by those who do not want us to read, write or think for ourselves."
Spears Jones will be honored during a May 16 ceremony in the Great Hall at the Clinton Presidential Center. There will be a reception for her preceding the dinner at 5:30 p.m. For ticket information, email wtrieschmann@sbcglobal.net.
The Porter Fund's Lifetime Achievement Award, which comes with $5,000 in prize money, is given out every five years to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and recognized body of work. Spears Jones is the fifth Arkansas writer to be given the honor following Donald Harington in 2004, Miller Williams in 2009, Charles Portis in 2014 and Jo McDougall in 2019.
The Porter Fund was founded in 1984 by novelist Jack Butler and novelist and lawyer Phil McMath to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel, a noted professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The Porter Fund prize is named in honor of Kimpel's mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter. The annual prize of $2,000 is given to an Arkansas writer of merit and has been awarded to over 30 poets, novelists, nonfiction writers and playwrights.