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2025 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

Award-winning author and former Poet Laureate of Alabama Jennifer Horne received ���߲ݴ�ý University's Hall-Waters Prize on April 25.

The poet and nonfiction author began the day reading some of her works and answering questions from students in Dr. Kirk Curnutt's English senior seminar class during a presentation in the Lamar P. Higgins Ballrooms on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus. Horne was introduced at the event by her husband, Don Noble.

Endowed by the late Dr. Wade Hall, a Bullock County native and TROY alumnus, in memory of his parents Wade Hall, Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters, the award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts. Dr. Wade Hall was an author, former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.

Dr. Kerry Palmer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, said the University was honored to host and award the prize annually.

“This ceremony goes back almost 25 years as an opportunity for ���߲ݴ�ý University to represent some of what is the very best about being in the deep South and that is literature, writing and artistic expression that is unique to this part of the country,” Dr. Palmer said. “All of this and the reason we are sitting here today is due to the efforts of Wade Hall. There was a 30-mile journey that changed Wade Hall's life and that was coming down the road from Union Springs to ���߲ݴ�ý and graduating in 1953 from what was then ���߲ݴ�ý State Teachers College. It is our honor to host this event that celebrates the legacy of Wade Hall and celebrates artistic and literary expression in the deep South that we all love so much.”

Gregg Swem represented the late Dr. Hall at the luncheon and said he is drawn to biography such as “Odyssey of a Wandering Mind,” Horne's biography of author Sara Mayfield.

“I love rich details of people's lives in context of social, political and geographical frameworks,” Swem said. “So, I had no trouble settling into our honoree Jennifer Horne's biography of author Sara Mayfield. “Odyssey of a Wandering Mind” is an engrossing account of a brilliant woman from a privileged background who accomplished a great deal in her creative life despite being confined to a mental institution for a number of years. To get a complete picture, she has burrowed into Mayfield's complex life to such an extent that I'm sure she must have felt almost consumed by it, working for a number of years on this outstanding biography. Congratulations to Ms. Horne. We all look forward to more creativity from the pen of this year's Hall-Waters Prize recipient.”

Horne called the experience as somewhat overwhelming and a delight.

“It is a delight to win the Hall-Waters Prize. Dr. Hall was truly a powerhouse as a writer, teacher, editor, interviewer, reviewer, playwright, and from all I have heard, a really kind and generous person,” she said. “I feel a certain kinship with him as someone who grew up in one state but who has made an adult life and career in another. I'm grateful for what my adopted state of Alabama has brought me, still a daughter of Arkansas. I also love the way that this award honors Dr. Hall's parents. As has been said, my latest book of poems, “Letters to Little Rock,” is about my father, and in 2020, my sister and I published a book of poems by our late mother. It is important to honor where you come from and from whom.”

While it took a number of years before Horne had her first work published, she said writing was always what she wanted to do.

“For a while, I wasn't sure that I would get my poems published in a book, but along the way, I kept building a writing life,” Horne said. “It is what I always wanted and what I have been fortunate enough to have and keep having. Writing is a lifelong engagement and a lifelong joy, and this recognition of what I have done so far means the world to me.”

Horne served as the 12^th Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2017-2021. In addition to her biography, “Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield,” published in 2024 by the University of Alabama Press, her work includes poetry collections including “Little Wanderer,” “Bottle Tree,” “Borrowed Light” and “Letters to Little Rock” and a collection of short stories, “Tell the World You're a Wildflower.” Additionally, she has edited and co-edited several volumes of poetry, including “Root & Plant & Bloom: Poems by Dodie Walton Horne.” She is the recipient of the Tuscaloosa Arts Council's Druid City Literary Arts Award and was named the Poet of the Year by the Alabama State Poetry Society in 2021.

2024 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

Award-winning nonfiction author Patricia Foster, a native of Fairhope, received the Hall-Waters Prize from ���߲ݴ�ý University on April 12.

Foster, who is professor emerita at the University of Iowa's celebrated MFA Program where she taught for more than 25 years, will read selections from her most recent memoir, “Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter” (2023), at 9:30 a.m. in Janice Hawkins Cultural Arts Park on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus. Admission is free and open to the public. In case of rain the reading will be held in the Lamar P. Higgins Ballroom, located on the second floor of the Trojan Center.

Endowed by the late Dr. Wade Hall, a Bullock County native and TROY alumnus, in memory of his parents Wade Hall, Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters, the award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts. Past winners include Rep. John Lewis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Pat Conroy, Natasha Trethewey, Cassandra King, Ace Atkins, and the songwriting team of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, among others. 

“Patricia Foster is a wonderfully dexterous essayist and fiction writer whose work captures the complexities of Southern families,” said Dr. Kirk Curnutt, Chair of English at ���߲ݴ�ý University. “'Written in the Sky'is really the culmination of all of her work on the ties that bind between sisters and daughters and parents, with a keen eye on setting, which is always rich in description and intense in mood. Her writing focuses on themes readers feel intensely today—healing and recovery, self-acceptance, forgiveness, and empathy. She is a veteran of many of the most prestigious literary journals publishing today, and a wonderfully encouraging teacher and editor.”

Foster is the author of eight books, including, in addition to “Written in the Sky,” published by the University of Alabama Press, the novel “Girl from Soldier Creek,” the essay collection “Just Beneath My Skin,” and the memoir “All the Lost Girls: Confessions of a Southern Daughter.” Additionally, she co-edited the creative nonfiction anthology “Understanding the Essay” with Jeff Porter, and three collections of women's nonfiction, “The Healing Circle: Narratives of Recovery,” co-edited with Mary Swander, “Sister to Sister,” and “Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul.”She is the recipient of a 2020 Pushcart Prize, the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction, and the SFA Prize for the Novel, among many other honors.

For the third straight year, English majors in Dr. Curnutt's English 4495, senior seminar, are organizing the Hall-Waters ceremony, from picking the menu and writing the award citation to publicizing the event.

“The hands-on experience students gain in putting a ceremony like this together positions them perfectly for future employment either in publishing, literary tourism, or arts management,” Curnutt said. “We already know our majors are excellent creative artists. This event gives them an opportunity to demonstrate that they know how to put on an exciting, memorable show.”

2023 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

Renowned poet Terrance Hayes, a 2014 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award recipient and a National Book Award winner, received the Hall-Waters Prize from ���߲ݴ�ý University on April 28.

Hayes, who is currently professor of English at New York University, will present selections from his forthcoming collection, So to Speak (July 2023), and his award-winning 2018 collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, at 10 a.m. in Janice Hawkins Cultural Arts Park on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus. Admission is free and open to the public. In case of rain, the reading will be held in the Claudia Crosby Theater.

The Hall-Waters Prize is endowed by TROY alumnus Dr. Wade Hall, an author, former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY. Dr. Hall, a native of Bullock County, endowed the prize as a memorial to his parents, Wade Hall Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters Hall. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts.

“Terrance Hayes is an astonishingly versatile poet and essayist whose work testifies both to the value of tradition and to the salience of contemporary popular culture,” said Dr. Kirk Curnutt, chair of English at ���߲ݴ�ý University. “His seven poetry collections and two collections of essays really capture the beauty that arises when vernacular is set within the framework of experimental cadences and established forms, adding mystery and intensity to everyday issues of identity, family, and commitment. His work is wonderfully accessible and yet dignified both by formality and urgency in a way that makes them impossible to walk away from—they linger in the mind. It is not every day at ���߲ݴ�ý University that we are visited by someone who is both a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and a National Book Award winner, not to mention his many other honors. Our students are very excited to meet one of the leading lights in American poetry.”

Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections: So to Speak; American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. His prose collection, To Float In the Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Most recently, Watch Your Language (2023) is a collection of graphic reviews, illustrated prose, and visualized poetics addressing the last century of American poetry.

Past winners include Rep. John Lewis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Pat Conroy, Natasha Trethewey, Cassandra King, Ace Atkins, and the songwriting team of Dan Pan and Spooner Oldham, among others. 

For the second straight year, English majors in Dr. Curnutt's English 4495 senior seminar are organizing the Hall-Waters ceremony, from picking the menu and writing the award citation to publicizing the event.

“The hands-on experience students gain in putting a ceremony like this together positions them perfectly for future employment either in publishing, literary tourism, or arts management,” Curnutt said. “We already know our majors are excellent creative artists. This event gives them an opportunity to demonstrate that they know how to put on an exciting, memorable show.”

2022 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

Renowned author Michelle Richmond, a Mobile, Ala. native whose recent novel The Wonder Test has been hailed as a “gripping thriller” and witty satire of “high-stakes education,” recieved the ���߲ݴ�ý University's Hall-Waters Prize on April 14.

Richmond will discuss the evolution of her career from her debut short-story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress (2001) through such bestsellers as The Year of Fog (2007) and The Marriage Pact (2017), at 9:30 a.m. in the Lamar P. Higgins Ballroom in the Trojan Center on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The Hall-Waters Prize is endowed by TROY alumnus Dr. Wade Hall, an author, former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY. Dr. Hall, a native of Bullock County, endowed the prize as a memorial to his parents, Wade Hall Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters Hall. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts.

“Michelle Richmond is a brilliant writer who walks a great line between satirizing social obsessions like marriage, education, and crime without sacrificing the empathy readers want to feel for characters,” said Dr. Kirk Curnutt, Chair of English at ���߲ݴ�ý University. “Her novels are at once rich in setting, encompassing both her native Alabama and more recently California, where she lives now, and yet intricate in plots that are both complex and heart-pounding.”

Richmond's most recent novel, The Wonder Test, introduces a new protagonist, FBI Agent Lina Connerly.

“FBI agent Lina Connerly promises to become the star of a fictional franchise every bit as interesting as Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series or Karin Slaughter's Dr. Sara Linton novels,” Curnutt said. “It's not easy to create a sleuth or crime solver whose interior life is as compelling as the thrillers she's inveigled in, but with Lina, Michelle has accomplished that wonderfully. I can't wait for the next Lina novel.”

Richmond was raised in Mobile and graduated from the University of Alabama with degrees in English and journalism. While pursuing an Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of Arkansas, she met her future husband, Kevin, and relocated to the University of Miami. After stints in sales and advertising in New York City, she relocated to Beijing, China, an experience that inspired her first novel, The Dream of the Blue Room (2003). Eventually, she and her family relocated to the suburbs of her husband's native Northern California, where the clashing political cultures of hi-tech, wellness and fitness, and gentrification have inspired her recent work. In addition to a new novel, she is currently writing a memoir about expatriate life during the pandemic in Paris, where she spent most of 2019-2021.

This year's ceremony is particularly notable for the lead taken by English majors in Dr. Curnutt's English 4495, senior seminar, organizing the event.

“We're trying to give our majors practical, hands-on experience in publishing, literary tourism, and arts management,” Curnutt said. “The Hall-Waters Prize is a great opportunity for our students to step up and discover what it takes to host a public event, from curating an award to publicizing and promoting an author's appearance. After April 14, they'll be able to walk into any organization and host an event with aplomb.”

2020 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

Renowned author and songwriter Allison Moorer received ���߲ݴ�ý University's Hall-Waters Prize during a virtual ceremony.

Moorer, an Academy Award-nominee whose recent memoir, “Blood,” has been heralded as a frank and cathartic memoir of family and healing, is a leading voice in country, folk and Americana music and has written hit songs for artists such as Trisha Yearwood, Kenny Chesney and Miranda Lambert.

The ceremony, which was originally scheduled for an in-person event on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus was moved online following the cancellation of campus events due to the COVID-19 coronavirus. Plans for a fall event that would bring Moorer to campus are under way.

The Hall-Waters Prize is endowed by TROY alumnus Dr. Wade Hall, an author, former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.

Dr. Hall, a native of Bullock County, endowed the prize as a memorial to his parents, Wade Hall Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters Hall. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts. Past winners include Rep. John Lewis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Pat Conroy, Natasha Trethewey, Cassandra King, Ace Atkins, and the songwriting team of Dan Pan and Spooner Oldham, among others.

Maj. Gen. Walter Givhan, Senior Vice Chancellor for Advancement and Economic Development, presented the award to Moorer via video conference.

“We are so proud to have this opportunity to present the Hall-Waters Prize to singer, songwriter and author Allison Moorer,” Givhan said. “That Alabama voice truly comes through, not just in her songs, but also in her written work. Her memoir, ‘Blood,' is what we are honoring here today and what a work it is. What an accomplishment it is to bring the written word together with music for a complete and total experience. We are doing this presentation virtually here today, but we cannot wait to have Allison come to TROY and have the opportunity to interact with our students, faculty and staff.”

Moorer said she was extremely honored to receive the award, especially since it recognizes the work of Southern artists.

“I've always been and will continue to be a very proud Southerner. It's in me. It's who I am, so I'm delighted that this award is given to honor works of a Southerner,” Moorer said from her home in Nashville. “The people who have received the award before me, I'm just in awe of and I can't believe I get to be in such company. It means a lot to me to receive this award, and especially now when I feel like our lives are so different and who knows what we are going to emerge to. To have something like this happen during these times is a real bright spot.”

Moorer said the feedback she has received from her book and accompanying album is very rewarding.

“So much of the reward for me has been in the feedback I've gotten from people who have read the book or listened to the record or both,” she said. “That I'm able to help anyone in any way means that I have done good work, and, above all, I want to be of some sort of service to the world. It makes me feel good on another level to know that my work is being recognized by a University. It makes me feel that maybe my work has merit on a literary level as well.”

Moorer first gained fame when her debut single, “A Soft Place to Fall,” co-written with Gwil Owen, was featured in the Robert Redford-directed film “The Horse Whisperer.” The composition was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1999, leading to her performing it live at that year's Oscar ceremonies. The title track of the album from which it came, “Alabama Song,” demonstrates the artist's deep connection to her native state and in particular to Mobile, where she was born, and to Frankville and Monroeville, where she was raised.

Over the course of her subsequent nine albums, Moorer has diversified from mainstream country into pop, folk, and finally into Americana/roots music, where she is widely hailed for her earthy vocals and narrative approach to lyrics. While most of her albums feature her original songs, she has released two celebrated collections of covers, including 2017's “Not Dark Yet,” on which she and her sister reinterpret Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, and Merle Haggard.

Following the presentation, Dr. Kirk Curnutt, Chair of TROY's Department of English, conducted an in-depth interview with Moorer focusing on her memoir, “Blood.” The full production will appear on the University's social media next week.

“One central goal of the Hall-Waters Prize has always been to celebrate the versatility of writing, to appreciate that words might be recorded on paper or they might be performed live but that regardless of format great art consoles human sorrows and uplifts grief through the craft of language,” Dr. Curnutt said. “We're very excited to celebrate Ms. Moorer's work, and we cannot wait to have her come to ���߲ݴ�ý, when we are able to schedule a visit, to speak with our students.”

2019 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing

���߲ݴ�ý University is proud to announce that the recipients of the 2019 Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing are the songwriting duo of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. Once described by The Independent as a "two-man soul hit factory," Dan and Spooner collaborated upon several of the defining American soul-pop songs of the 1960s and 1970s. From their first collaboration, Joe Simon's "Let's Do It Over" (four months in the Top 20 in 1965) on through Janis Joplin's seminal performance of their "A Woman Left Lonely" on her posthumously released classic "Pearl," the duo helped define contemporary Southern music as composers, musicians and producers. Spooner and Dan will spend Friday, April 12, in ���߲ݴ�ý meeting with students and talking about the craft of songwriting, while on Saturday they'll appear together to discuss their careers, both as a team and individually, in the South Tent. This is your chance to meet two keystones of the Muscle Shoals sound!

���߲ݴ�ý University to honor Muscle Shoals legends Penn, Oldham with Hall-Waters Prize

Renowned songwriters Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, two linchpins of the Muscle Shoals music scene that helped define the soul, pop and rock music of the 1960s and 1970s, will receive the Hall-Waters Prize from ���߲ݴ�ý University on April 12.

The duo will discuss the craft of songwriting, the history of Southern music and the special role of Muscle Shoals in American popular culture from 10-11:30 a.m. in John M. Long Hall Room 104, on the ���߲ݴ�ý Campus. Admission is free and open to the public.

The following day, Penn and Oldham will speak at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery before performing a concert that evening featuring the numerous hits they wrote for Janis Joplin, the Box Tops, and Aretha Franklin.

“It's amazing to look at Dan and Spooner's credits and realize just how prolific and diverse they were during the heyday of Southern soul and rock,” said Dr. Kirk Curnutt, chair of English at ���߲ݴ�ý University and a co-director of the Alabama Book Festival, which ���߲ݴ�ý University co-sponsors with the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, Old Alabama Town and several other state organizations. “They wrote ‘I'm Your Puppet' for James and Bobby Purify, then ‘Cry Like a Baby' for Alex Chilton's Box Tops, two songs that sound like they come from opposite ends of that era's musical spectrum.”

The duo's ability to create music stretching across many different musical styles truly stands out, Curnutt said.

“More important is the sheer craft of their songs and the beauty with which they channel and synthesize so many veins of American music at once: rhythm and blues, gospel, country, soul, pop—you hear them all, sometimes all at once, in songs like ‘I Worship the Ground You Walk On,' which Etta James among others recorded, or ‘Up Tight, Good Man,' by Laura Lee,” Curnutt said. “Dan and Spooner's songs crystalize so much of the American experience, and yet they feel as wide-open as America itself. Each of their songs, no matter how perfect the melody or precise the lyrics, provides space for the performer to reinvent the work and make it their own. You only need to listen to how Janis Joplin's aching version of their ‘A Woman Left Lonely' differs from Charlie Rich's more country treatment to appreciate how flexible those tunes are.”

Penn and Oldham are legendary figures beyond their collaborative efforts. Penn was still a teenager when a demo recorded with his band, Benny Cagle and the Rhythm Swingsters, called “Is a Bluebird Blue?” caught the ear of Conway Twitty, who made it a hit in 1959. At 20, he became the first in-house songwriter at FAME Studios (short for Florence Alabama Musical Enterprises) in the Shoals, working closely with founder Rick Hall.

A few years later, Penn relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, where he wrote the classic “The Dark End of the Street” with Chips Moman and soon produced several hit albums and singles for the Box Tops, whose lead singer, 16-year-old Alex Chilton, later became of one of the most lionized cult figures in rock music.

As the resident keyboardist for FAME Studios, Oldham remains one of rock's most highly sought sidemen, earning him inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Musicians Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Oldham performed on such classics as Percy Sledge's “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Wilson Pickett's “Mustang Sally,” while his proto-funk electric piano drives Aretha Franklin's “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).”

After relocating to Los Angeles, Oldham backed artists as diverse as Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Since relocating back to Alabama, he has worked with Bettye Levette, the Drive-By Truckers and many more.

Since the early 1990s, Penn and Oldham have occasionally toured together, performing selections from their vast repertoire. In 1999, they released "Moments from This Theatre," a live recording described by allmusic.com as “an intimate and inspiring recording by two of the unsung giants of southern soul.”

The pair come to ���߲ݴ�ý University to receive the Hall-Waters Prize after a March 2019 tour of Japan.

The Hall-Waters Prize is endowed by TROY alumnus Dr. Wade Hall, an author, former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Hall, a native of Bullock County, Alabama, endowed the prize as a memorial to his parents, Wade Hall Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters Hall. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts. Past winners include Rep. John Lewis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Pat Conroy, Natasha Trethewey, Cassandra King and Ace Atkins, among others.

Now in its 14^th year, the Alabama Book Festival is a free event celebrating reading, literacy and the history of the book, held at Old Alabama Town, 301 Columbus St., in Montgomery. The festival offers workshops in fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry and setting up author tours.

Also speaking at the event will be Dick Cooper, whose photographs of Muscle Shoals music in the 1970s offer the most comprehensive visual record of the scene.