Every last Monday of the month at 8 p.m. This is a free, public, non-ticketed event.

April 29

• Frank X Walker is a superpower of Southern literature, a professor and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky, and a recipient of numerous fellowships, residences, and awards, some of which include Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kentucky Arts Council, the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry, and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. He coined the term "Affriliachia," and founded the Affrilachian Poets. He has published ten collections of poetry, and his latest work is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.

• Jim Embry is difficult to pin down in just a few titles. Among other things, he is a gardener, speaker, organizer, photographer, and essayist, and has an extensive background in community and civil-rights activism. Jim received the 2023 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for his work at Sustainable Communities Network, Slow Food USA, and Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance. His newest work, Jim Embry Reader: Compilation of Articles, Speeches and Foolishness, is set to be published in the fall of 2024.

Free parking is available at 446 East High Street (look for the Kentucky Native Café sign). Limited parking is also available at Michler's main entrance at 417 East Maxwell Street. Kentucky Native Café is typically closed Mondays; doors will open at 7:30 p.m.

January 29

Bobbie Ann Mason, award-winning novelist, memoirist, and short-fiction writer, is one of
the crowning jewels of Kentucky and the South.

John Lackey, poet, painter, printer, filmmaker, songwriter, and woodcarver, is a Lexington native working out of his studio, Homegrown Press Studio and Gallery on North Limestone.

February 26

Carrie Mullins is a novelist and short-fiction writer. Her first novel, Night Garden, was published in 2016. She is a native of Mount Vernon, Kentucky.

Richard Taylor, poet laureate of Kentucky from 1999 to 2001 and co-owner of Poor Richard's Books in Frankfort, retired after fourteen years from Transylvania University as Keenan Visiting Writer. His latest release, Fathers, is a biographical collection of essays.

March 25

Crystal Wilkinson was the Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023, and she is currently a Bush-Holbrook Professor in creative writing at the University of Kentucky. Her latest release is Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir.

Julia Johnson, author of Naming the Afternoon (poems), The Falling Horse, and, most recently, Subsidence, teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky.