James Baker Hall Foundation 2025 Book Award Winner: Willie Davis

The foundation is proud to announce the winner of the second annual James Baker Hall Foundation Book Award. Willie Davis of Lexington was selected as the winner of this year’s competition in short fiction.

Willie Davis’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Kenyon Review, Salon, storySouth, and Berkeley Fiction Review amongst other places. He is the winner of The Willesden Short Story Prize (judged by Zadie Smith) and the Katherine Ann Porter Prize (judged by Amy Hempel). He is the author of the novel NIGHTWOLF and the short story collection I CAN OUTDANCE JESUS.

Toni Ann Johnson, Flannery O’Connor Award-winning author of Light Skin Gone to Waste and the 2025 James Baker Hall Book Award judge, made these comments, “Honeysuckle Season” is a novel in stories that takes place in Hazard, Kentucky, and unfolds during the course of one day after a terrible car accident kills a resident. Using a Rashomon approach, Davis moves into the consciousness of multiple townspeople, and we learn about them and their lives. These characters are wonderfully well-drawn. Flawed and funny, odd, and wounded, striving and defeated, we get to know them well enough to root for them as individuals and as people who care for each other more than they realize. It’s a remarkable read.”

Watch in the upcoming months for more on Willie and his upcoming book.