Author Kenny Fries has established a literary award that seeks to “provide visibility to the next generation of disabled and/or Deaf writers.”
Fries, the poet and author of memoirs including Body, Remember and In the Province of the Gods, launched the Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award on Monday. The winner of the prize, which comes with a cash award of $1,000, will be selected by Fries during his lifetime; after his death, the winner will be chosen by the executors of the Kenny Fries Literary Trust.
The inaugural winner of the award is Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, a poet, rootworker, and herbalist who co-founded the Deaf Poets Society. He is the author of the poetry collections Slingshot, which won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry, and Watchnight.
“In a world where disabled writers are more likely to be written about by caretakers than published themselves, I’m grateful to be the first recipient of the Kenny Fries Award so I can continue to commit to my work,” Johnson said in a statement.
Fries said, “I chose Cyrée Jarelle Johnson as the inaugural award recipient because his poems explode the boundaries of language, subject, and form. His poems give us the opportunity to encounter those we usually do not meet in the pages of our poetry. He gives space to a wide array of people, places, and politics.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
