Transylvania University has named Pauletta Hansel this year’s Judy Gaines Young Book Award winner. The award honors the work of Appalachian authors.
Hansel talks about her poetry and shares some of her work.
“Wherever I am, I am also looking through the eye of poetry and image and what our experiences tell us about what it means to be human.”
That’s Appalachian poet Pauletta Hansel in August 2018. She was preparing to lead a workshop designed to help with grief. We talked about Palindrome, Hansel’s book written in response to her mother’s journey through dementia and Pauletta’s own journey with her as caregiver and poet. Palindrome was the winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for best Appalachian Poetry Book.
And now, Transylvania University has named Hansel this year’s Judy Gaines Young Book Award winner.
“I am beyond honored to have received this award," said Hansel.
Hansel said so many of her writing heroes are past recipients.
"I look down the list of previous years and George Ella Lyon, who is so dear to my heart and has been so important to my writing, Frank X Walker, Crystal Wilkinson, Silas House," reported Hansel.
This is the eleventh year for the award. Transylvania University’s Maurice Manning said this honor has recognized serious writers in our region who’ve made contributions to our literary culture. He said Hansel was at the top of the list this year.
“It’s largely because she has an extensive body of work. She has long been an advocate, particularly for female voices in the literature of our region. And she in a very powerful way also an activist in recognizing particularly the struggles of the Appalachian region over a long history,” explained Manning.
Pauletta Hansel was born in Richmond, Kentucky, and grew up in Breathitt County. The award-winning writer and teacher is the author of 10 poetry collections, including Heartbreak Tree and Coal Town Photograph. Her work has been featured in journals such as Oxford American, Appalachian Journal, and Still the Journal. She’s a founding member of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition and was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate.
In 2019, at a poetry reading in Breathitt County, she read from her book Coal Town Photograph.
“An Ode to Library Basements: And to the girl who skittered down the steps those bottomless Sunday afternoons to lose herself in possibility. You made me.”
In 2022, she read from her collection Heart Break Tree during our interview.
“The tongue-in-cheek title is, Home is the Place Where, When You Have to Go There You Only Think About How to Get Out.”
“Busted up doll heads where the canned goods used to be, sun-steeped hill-buckled sidewalks, and everybody just looks tired. Nobody cares this is where your mother used to buy her meat. The houses you lived in plowed under.”
And in 2024, to a Northern Kentucky audience, she shared poems from her book, Will There Also Be Singing?
America. America, I am not singing you beautiful. I do not hear the melody beneath the rolling clang and clatter of your discord. I did not know I loved you, America, even broken as you were, until the fist came down. Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you thought you had until the dream of it is gone?”
Early this month at Transylvania University, Hansel was honored, as were student winners Skye Struwig and Dylan Howell.
Pauletta Hansel says the Judy Gaines Young Book Award typically focuses on the recipient’s past work. She’s looking forward to reading to audiences from her new book, Understory: A Women’s History of Appalachia.
"This is a hybrid book. It includes both history, and memoir, and poetry, of course. I’m not one to leave the poetry behind. And looks at the history of the Appalachian region through my maternal line,” said Hansel.
Understory is being published by the University Press of Kentucky and is scheduled to be released this October.
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