WKU News

A WKU English professor is glad to see Robert Penn Warren in the inaugural class of the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Warren, a Guthrie native, was one of six named to the hall during an induction ceremony last week. Others were Harriette Arnow, William Wells Brown, Harry Caudill, Elizabeth Madox Roberts and James Still. The inaugural class was limited to writers who had passed away.

Professor Mary Ellen Miller called the list “wonderful and somewhat predictable.”

“Of course we at WKU and all parts of western and southwestern Kentucky are thrilled with the induction of Robert Penn Warren, perhaps the most distinguished member of the group,” she said.

Warren is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the only person in the group to have won the award for both fiction and poetry. He was also the first U.S. poet laureate and the only national laureate in the class.

WKU is the home of the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies, which hosts annual seminars, symposia and awards programs.

The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington is the host site for the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Contact: Mary Ellen Miller, (270) 745-5721.