Frank X Walker was born in Danville, Kentucky, and earned a BA from the University of Kentucky and an MFA from Spaulding University. He helped to found the Affrilachian Poets group and served as founding editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the new Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture. His poetry collections include Load in Nine Times (Liveright, 2024), winner of a PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, About Flight (2015), Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2013), Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride (2010), When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (2008), Black Box (2005), Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York (2003), and Affrilachia (2000). His recent work has appeared recently in Mischief, Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press), Tobacco (Kentucky Writers Coalition), Kentucky Christmas (University Press of Kentucky), Cornbread Nation III, Kudzu, The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass (University Press of Kentucky) and the Louisville Review.

Walker’s awards include the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence from the Actors Theatre's Keeper of the Chronicle Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. The University of Kentucky awarded Walker an honorary degree in 2001 for his collective community work and artistic achievements. Transylvania University awarded Walker an honorary degree in 2002.

Walker has served as the poet laureate of Kentucky from 2013 to 2015, as well as the founder and executive director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, the program coordinator of the University of Kentucky's King Cultural Center, and the assistant director of Purdue University's Black Cultural Center.

Walker is a professor of creative writing at the University of Kentucky.

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