2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture with Allison Hedge Coke

Join us for a reading by Allison Hedge Coke, 2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize Recipient, on Tuesday, October 3 at 7:30 at Moeser Auditorium in Hill Hall on UNC-Chapel Hill campus. The reading is free and open to the public.

For the whole of her astonishing literary career, memoirist, poet, and activist Allison Adelle Hedge Coke has embodied a deep commitment to the land and the people who are often overlooked as they work its fields, fish its waters, and try to make a life amidst seemingly impossible obstacles. Having worked in manual labor until she was 30 years old—in fields, factories, commercial fishing, construction, and cleaning—Hedge Coke brings a compassionate and unflinching perspective on the lives of everyday people in her poems, nonfiction, and activist work. “This is a time we must unravel what would otherwise surely choke us,” she says as an invitation to all who read her work and, through it, hope to find a way into their own hard-fought stories.

Among several awards and honors, Allison Hedge Coke is a 1998 American Book Award winner, a 2022 National Book Award Finalist, and a 2023 Emory Elliott Book Award winner.