Friends of the Knox County Public Library and the John C. Hodges Society of the University of Tennessee Libraries will present the 2021 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture with novelist Wiley Cash and poet Frank X Walker. Frank X Walker is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate and is the current head of the MFA program at the University of Kentucky. Cash, a New York Times best-selling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy is the founder of the Open Canon Book Club and co-founder of the Land More Kind Appalachian Artists Residency.

The annual lecture honors the late Wilma Dykeman Stokely (1920-2006), writer, speaker, teacher, historian, environmentalist and longtime friend of the Knox County Public Library.

Copies of books by both authors are available for purchase at Union Ave Books, one of the sponsors of the lecture. Other sponsors are the Knox County Public Library, UT Libraries and WUOT.

This event, which is free and open to the public, will be livestreamed. Attendees should register HERE.