KFW Announces Winners of the Inaugural KFW Writers Prize
Press Release written by Ellen Birkett Morris
The new KFW Writers Prize, established through a generous gift from the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, honors Kentucky women writers whose work demonstrates artistic excellence, aligns with feminist values, and advances social change through literature. This award continues the shared vision of KFW and the Kentucky Women Writers Conference to support women and marginalized voices in the literary arts, center feminist perspectives, and amplify voices that challenge oppression. The prize, which includes a cash prize, reading, and inscribed plaque, will be offered each year and will feature different genres.
The 2025 prize genre was for poetry, and was judged by former Kentucky Poet Laureate and Sallie Bingham Award winner Crystal Wilkinson. Kentucky Poets Carrie Green, Adrian Sanders Russo, and Marianne Worthington will be awarded $1,000 each and invited to give a reading of their work. Tina Parker and Te’zha Jones received honorable mentions. The winning poets include:
Carrie Green is the author of Studies of Familiar Birds: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2020) and the winner of the 2025 Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing. Green earned her MFA at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Her poems and visual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, Still: The Journal, Terrain, Tupelo Quarterly, Bellingham Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. She hosts the Prompt to Page writing podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
“In this time of reduced funding for the arts and attacks on the freedom of expression, it’s an honor to receive an award that supports feminist writing that aims for social change. Many of the poems in my submission focus on women’s bodies, including how they are objectified and how they are treated by the medical establishment. American women are losing the right to make decisions about their own bodies; in fact, they are dying because of it,” said Green.
Adrian Sanders Russo is a poet and copy editor living in Elizabethtown, Kentucky with her husband and son. She has published two chapbooks of poetry: This Side of the Dirt (Bullshit Lit) and Lynchian (Alien Buddha Press). You can find her work in publications such as Juke Joint, Maudlin House, Indiana Review Online, and many others. Adrian’s work revels in the intersection of the rural and surreal.
“I am incredibly honored to be chosen for this prize. Kentucky is so rich in extraordinary poets and writers. In 2017, I was lucky enough to be selected as a participant in the KFW summer residency, Voice Lessons, hosted by George Ella Lyon. At that point, I had never had the opportunity to solely focus on writing and workshops with other writers. The community that was modeled for me there opened me up to the possibilities of the kind of community I could create back at college. The women that I created with there were so inspiring to me then and continue to be now through both activism and creative output,” said Russo.
Photo credit: Bolt & Reed
Marianne Worthington is the author of The Girl Singer (University Press of Kentucky, 2021), winner of the 2022 Weatherford Award for Poetry, and the forthcoming “Water. Witness. Word.” from Belle Point Press in February 2026. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, Salvation South, Zone 3, and Southern Humanities Review, among other places. She co-founded and was poetry editor of Still: The Journal, an online literary magazine publishing writers, artists, and musicians with ties to Appalachia (2009-2024). Her work has been supported by Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship. She has served as senior writer in residence at the Appalachian Writers Workshop since 2024.
“I’m particularly honored to be recognized by Kentucky Foundation for Women because they helped me get serious about writing nearly 20 years ago, and they’ve been important in my development as a writer, editor, and poet ever since. This current grant award is special to me because the KFW readers and the judge read blindly, so this grant truly is earned by the merits of the poems. That kind of recognition is rare, and I’m so grateful; as Sharon reminded me, it’s a joy to get such good news in these dark and scary days across our nation when we often feel powerless. I know that poems can’t actually, literally save us, but they bring me a moment of joy or reflection or meditation, and I am grateful I live in Kentucky where women’s art is valued, shared, and rewarded,” said Worthington.
The prize was open to women and gender non-conforming writers age 18 and older, who were Kentucky resident at time of application. Current and former students of the final judge were not eligible to enter. The prize was selected through a blind judging process. Writers submitted 10 to 15 poems, up to 20 pages of work. It recognized writers whose work: centered feminist perspectives, amplifies voices, stories, or ideas that challenge oppression and uplift marginalized communities; demonstrated artistic excellence, craft, originality, and innovation and contributed to positive social change, through content, community engagement, or the work’s impact.
“I was honored to have read the ten finalists for this prize. These writers are continuing the long-standing traditions of the talented Kentucky women writers before them—telling our stories and speaking to the generational liberation and resilience of women all while exploring themes of the natural world, the body, queer identities and/or the working-class,” said judge Crystal Wilkinson.
KFW Executive Director Sharon LaRue and selected winners are available for interviews/appearances. Contact Ms. LaRue for further information and to schedule interviews.
