{"id":9945,"date":"2026-04-20T18:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/?p=9945"},"modified":"2026-04-21T21:06:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T21:06:37","slug":"first-ever-duo-receives-hall-waters-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/2026\/04\/20\/first-ever-duo-receives-hall-waters-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"First-ever duo receives Hall-Waters Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TROY, Ala. (TROJANVISION<\/a>) \u2014 Students and faculty gathered in the Trojan Center Ballrooms Friday morning to hear from award-winning authors Tom Franklin<\/a> and Beth Ann Fennelly<\/a>, the 2026 Hall-Waters Prize recipients.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hall-Waters Prize honors distinguished writers whose work contributes to southern literature. Franklin and Fennelly are the first duo to receive the award. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The husband-and-wife authors previously collaborated on the 2013 historical novel\u00a0“The Tilted World,” set in Mississippi during prohibition and the Great Mississippi Flood.\u00a0During their visit, Franklin and Fennelly spoke on a panel, answering questions and discussing their careers in literature.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt [winning the Hall-Waters Prize] feels great,\u201d Fennelly said, \u201cWe\u2019re deeply honored by it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWS FOR YOU: Kate Gaskin returns to campus to celebrate the release of her newest book<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so fun to win it together and to be here together. It\u2019s especially nice to come to a place where students are so well prepared to receive you because they\u2019ve read your work in advance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve prepared in every way, and it makes the experience warm and lovely.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event was organized by students in Dr. Kirk Curnutt<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0senior\u00a0seminar\u00a0class, who spent the semester planning the Hall-Waters ceremony.\u00a0Tianna Burbank, a senior\u00a0english\u00a0major from Kinston, Alabama, and a student in Curnutt\u2019s class, said seeing the event come together was rewarding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel a bunch of pride, not only for myself, but towards my classmates,\u201d Burbank said. \u201cWe all put in so much work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeeing it come to fruition and seeing them do such a wonderful job is an incredible feeling.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the panel, Franklin discussed his writing process, describing how his best work comes when characters begin to act on their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said up there [on the panel] it\u2019s better than sex, drugs, or rock and roll,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cThis kind of miracle is happening between your brain and your hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never experienced anything else like that, it\u2019s nuts. It doesn\u2019t always happen, but when it does, time will just fly by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fennelly also addressed the decline in reading in modern society and emphasized its importance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel that reading is almost a radical act right now because so few people do it,\u201d Fennelly said. \u201cThe way it’s affecting our cognition and making us less able to consolidate information makes us vulnerable to things like demagoguery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LOOKING BACK: Meet the authors who have been awarded the Hall-Waters Prize<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur cognitive powers are declining due to our lack of reading. To be with a group of vibrant english majors who are so well versed gives me hope that there’s going to be enough people who are retaining their skills that we’re going to make it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the panel, the authors were formally awarded the Hall-Waters Prize at a luncheon, each receiving a $5,000 honor recognizing their contributions to southern literature. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TROY, Ala. (TROJANVISION) \u2014 Students and faculty gathered in the Trojan Center Ballrooms Friday morning to hear from award-winning authors Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, the 2026 Hall-Waters Prize recipients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Hall-Waters Prize honors distinguished writers whose work contributes to southern literature. Franklin and Fennelly are the first duo to receive the award. <\/p>\n

The…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":9963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1127],"tags":[3028,3029,923,3027],"topics":[17],"class_list":["post-9945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news","tag-beth-ann-fennelly","tag-dr-kirk-curnutt","tag-hall-waters-prize","tag-tom-franklin","topics-troy-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9945"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10002,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945\/revisions\/10002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9945"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=9945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}