Poet Laureate of Alabama  |
| Background |
Sue Brannan Walker is known nationally and internationally for her poetry, as well as for her critical articles on poets and writers such as James Dickey, Marge Piercy, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers. As Publisher of Negative Capability Press, and of the journal Negative Capability, she has published not only such authors as Jimmy Carter, E.O. Wilson, John Updike, William Stafford, Gerald Stern, Jack Coulehan, David Ignatow, Mary Oliver, Pat Schneider, Karl Shapiro, Richard Eberhart, Diane Wakoski, Roald Hoffman, Bernie Seigel, and Rita Dove, but also numerous Alabama poets and writers, providing them a greater audience and some of them their first opportunity to be published. She has continued this work since 1981 — a distinguished effort recognized by Writer's Digest when it ranked Negative Capability Third in the Nation in Poetry in the early 1990s out of approximately 2700 markets.
Walker’s poetry, prose works, and community service have deservedly garnered numerous awards, grants, and fellowships. She has published six volumes of poetry. Her latest collection is It's Good Weather for Fudge, Conversing with Carson McCullers. Another recent book, Blood Will Bear Your Name, won Book of the Year from Alabama State Poetry Society. Life on the Line: Selections on Words and Healing attests to Walker’s interest in medical humanities. This anthology, edited with Rosaly Roffman, won the William Crawford Gorgas Award from the Medical Society of Alabama and a book award from the Alabama State Poetry Society. Walker serves as the chair of the University of South Alabama English Department. Current works in progress as of 2004 include: a study of Deep Ecology in James Dickey’s work; a novel on the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Mobile, Alabama; a biography of Jefferson Davis in sonnets; and work on Flannery O’Connor. |
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