Arkansas author Toni Jensen is the recipient of the 2024 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 $5000 prize makes it one of the state’s most lucrative as well as prestigious literary awards. Eligibility requires an Arkansas connection.
Jensen will be honored at a special award ceremony on October 10. Those interested in attending can contact Phil McMath at phillip@mcmathlaw.com.
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.
Fayetteville novelist Padma Viswanathan, the 2017 recipient of the Porter Prize, notified Jensen of her award.
“I’ve lived in Arkansas for a decade now, and my ties to and love for the place and its people strengthen each year,” said Jensen. “I was both surprised and moved by the Porter Prize committee’s decision. Arkansans have such a long, rich history of storytelling, and I’m proud to be considered an Arkansas writer and to be honored in this way.”
Toni Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a Dayton Peace Prize finalist and a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. Jensen’s essays have appeared in journals and magazines such as Orion, Catapult and Ecotone. She also is the author of the story collection From the Hilltop. Jensen has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and teaches in the low residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Métis.
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Photo: Toni Jensen
Photo credit: Eva Becker
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