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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I'm so excited to share that my book, What Good Is Heaven, has won the Weatherford Award for Best Appalachian Poetry! This is the highest honor in Appalachian literature & it's validating to be recognized as part of this tradition, to have my deep love for my Southern Appalachian home seen & known.

Hi Raye,

Ready? Set? Go!

CONGRATULATIONS!

After much deliberation over incredibly high-quality submissions, I'm pleased to share that your book, What Good is Heaven, has won the 2024 Weatherford Award for the Best Poetry book about Appalachia. Congratulations to EVERYONE who helped! btw, Here is a link so you can see the esteemed company that you now keep. If you scroll to the bottom & click "past winners" you'll behold the 55 year tradition of which are now a part!

The Weatherford Awards are given by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association annually to honor books that “best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.” The three categories recognized are fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The conferring of this annual $500 award in each of the three categories has come to be recognized as a major Appalachian event.

The speakers in What Good Is Heaven inhabit those contradictory spaces in Raye Hendrix’s riveting depictions of life in the mountains of North Alabama: the beauty and the blood-letting of farming, the community and the alienation of small town life, and the love for and the revulsion of queer youth cultivated inside the church and inside the home. These poems are splendidly crafted, melodious, and candid, and hearten readers to consider and reconsider their own experiences and ideologies inside Appalachia.—Marianne Worthington

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

how we feeling about tomorrow besties

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Tomorrow is my birthday! I have a request! ❄️🤍

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

New tour dates! Let's hang out!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

See you tonight, New Orleans!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Hey! I'll be in New Orleans this Sunday to finish out the fall leg of my book tour, but here are a few dates coming up in the Spring! Working on finalizing stops in Texas (Houston), New Jersey, & other stops as well! Let me know if you want me to come to your city!!!

A gray and white graphic sharing dates for Raye's "What Good Is Heaven" Spring 2025 book tour. January 5th: Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC. January 17: Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham, AL. March 26-29: AWP Conference in Los Angeles, CA. May 28: Read Denver in Denver, CO.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Your favorite cryptid-in-training (me) opened the internet to find not zero not one but TWO Pushcart nominations today!!!! I'm so so so grateful to the folks at @gnashingteethpub.bsky.social and The Journal for this kindness 🩶🩶🩶

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Hey! My book and many others are 50% off using the code EARLY at checkout!!! Great time to get a lot of poems for not a lot of money!!! 🩶 www.tamupress.com/book/9781680...

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

I want to do something with my rage, so I'm donating 100% of what I make from the next 5 books I sell (or $100) to Palestinian relief efforts. I have to do something with all this despair. It's not much, but it's something I can financially do right now.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

I wrote this poem while my students did in-class writing. I figured I'd write with them. Thanks to Gnashing Teeth Pub for holding space for election responses. I believe in this community of resistance we're continuing to build together. I believe we are the future. That's why they're so afraid.

Acceptable Losses by Raye Hendrix

after the 2024 election

Halloween in Texas and a mother
dresses her daughter and her daughter’s
stillborn daughter in the costumes of the living:
beautiful dresses, gold jewelry, painful shoes
to impress the unnecessary audience of dark.
In Tennessee, the floodwaters are still receding,
changing the map. Across the world in Palestine
they draw a border like a fate-thread, America
lending a knife. After the election, my mother says
try not to think of it as hate while in Alabama
my brother peels a Pride flag from his bumper
like a scar and a soldier at the edge of Arizona
guts a hidden stash of water, imagining a child.
My father says it’s the economy, a desperate people.
And after all, what is love to the god of property.
Nothing personal. Just good business. A loan.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Preorders for my first book, WHAT GOOD IS HEAVEN, are open now!!! Order from the press: www.tamupress.com/.../978168..... Order from Amazon: www.amazon.com/What-Good-He... More ordering options coming soon!!! ✨

A "preorder now" infographic in red, gray, and black for Raye's book, What Good Is Heaven.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 27/02/2024

✨ 𝒲𝐻𝒜𝒯 𝒢𝒪𝒪𝒟 𝐼𝒮 𝐻𝐸𝒜𝒱𝐸𝒩 cover reveal!!! ✨ The folks at Texas Review Press really nailed this one and I'm so excited! MY BOOK HAS A COVER OMG!!!!!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 04/02/2024

Come see me if you'll be at AWP!!! I'm on a panel and this poet is reading FICTION for the first time ever, too!!! Let's vibe together!!!!!!!

Raye at AWP

Reading: The Pinch & American Literary Review / Saturday, Feb. 10 at noon at The Big Rip Brewing Co: 216 E 9th Ave, North Kansas City, MO 64116

Panel: "Not Just Surviving: Queer Poets Thriving in the Red / Saturday, Feb. 10 at 3:20 until 4:35 PM / KC Convention Center Room 2103B

...& just generally zoomin around, vibing

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 23/01/2024

Hey y'all! My first book isn't out until this fall, but I'm reading some poems from it with my hometown journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, on March 21st! Come join me if you want a preview of my queer Alabama poems!!! Register here!!! uab.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

A flyer advertising the annual Birmingham Poetry Review reading series event. The featured poets are: Carlson Colenbaugh, L.S. McKee, and Raye Hendrix. The reading will be on Zoom on Thursday, March 21, at 6 PM Central Time.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 03/01/2024

15 years ago today these 16 year old kids started dating & we never broke up 💙

Raye (left) and their partner Jacob (right) at age 16. They stand against a blue background, and Raye holds silver pom-poms and wears a tiara while Jacob wears a blue football jersey with the number 55.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 09/09/2023

I've been having a hard time with some of my chronic health issues the last few days, but I did get to print out my book for the first time since it was an actual, forthcoming book (ty Texas Review Press!), & that felt really cool! 🌈✨ (& thanks to past me for impulse buying crystal sun catchers)

Raye's hand holding up a printer paper copy of their book, "What Good Is Heaven," binder-clipped together. A prism is casting a rainbow pattern over the title and Raye's name.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 15/08/2023

I've shared this everywhere else, but...new author photo in which I told the photographer I wanted my vibe to be "mysterious and vaguely threatening, like Damon Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries" 🗡️🥀🖤

Raye, a white feminine person with auburn hair, wears a black leather jacket and stands in front of a black background.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 05/08/2023

first bluesky post ever from a cabin in the mountains of east Tennessee, which is not where I live (true), and which is definitely not haunted (unclear)

A small, wooden cabin set into the side of a lush, green ravine.

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