Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award
Photo credit: Kristin V. Rehder
2026 RECIPIENT
MEG DAY
Poet & essayist Meg Day is the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award and finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship and an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, Day was also named the 2024 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence and the 2025 SouthArts State Fellow in Literary Arts for North Carolina. The co-editor of Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master (Pleiades, 2019), Day has received scholarly support for work in Deaf & disability studies from the Mellon Foundation, NC Humanities, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Recent work can be found in Best American Poetry & The New York Times. In 2026, Day’s manuscript Sound Lasso was awarded the Pegasus Poetry Book Prize and will be published by Graywolf Press. Day is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and Director of the MFA program at North Carolina State University. www.megday.com
“Receiving this award means a great deal to me at this particular moment in my life & my career. The world is changing, my politics are changing, & to feel tied to a strong lineage of queer & disabled poets is a lifeline of encouragement & camaraderie I welcome.”
“I chose Meg Day as the second recipient of the Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award because Meg’s poems, and Meg’s thinking and writing about Deaf and Disabled poetics, is groundbreaking,” Kenny says. ”In their poems, the rendering of Deaf and intersectional experience is lyrically powerful.”
“I invited Meg to write an essay for the three-year Disabiilty Futures in the Arts project. In Meg’s essay, “Unfit to Print: Refusing the Page in Deaf Poetics,” they write: “As a Deaf poet writing in English, I have long tried to get paper to do what it won’t: accommodate me. But how does one break the page? Every time I’ve tried, it’s been called experimental. Perhaps this is the new euphemism for disabled? Perhaps this has always been the euphemism for Deaf? Perhaps it’s just proof of the limited, nondisabled imagination, or our collective commitment to capitalism, which is itself a commitment to eugenics.”
I included Meg in the Disability Poetics series. A link to Meg’s Disabiity Poetics video reading and interview is below.
Meg’s recent public-facing projects, especially their Guggenheim Museum Poet-in-Residence projects, affirmed my belief: Meg Day shows us what the future of poetry can be.
DISABILITY POETICS VIDEO FEATURING MEG DAY
ABOUT THE Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award
Acclaimed writer and Disability Arts pioneer Kenny Fries has launched the Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award to provide recognition and visibility to the next generation of disabled and/or Deaf writers. The inaugural recipient of this annual award was announced on September 22, 2025, Fries’s 65th birthday.
This marks not only Kenny’s 65th birthday, but also the beginning of an annual tradition to support and celebrate a next generation of disabled and/or Deaf writers.
Fries has established the Kenny Fries Literary Trust to administer the award each year. While alive, Fries will personally select the disabled and/or Deaf recipient. Upon his passing or inability to continue, the Trust’s executors will assume that responsibility.
PREVIOUS WINNERS
“As a ‘pioneer’ of Disability Literature, as I age I’ve become increasingly concerned about the legacy of Disability Arts. My hope is this annual award will assist a disabled writer of a younger generation to become more widely known both in the Disability Arts community as well as in the arts world at large.”
DONATIONS & INQUIRIES
To support the Kenny Fries Disabled Writer Literary Award through donations, please contact Kenny Fries Literary Trust at kenny@kennyfries.com.