Acclaimed Poet James Allen Hall Awarded 2025 NEA Literature Fellowship
The Washington College Rose O’Neill Literary House director and professor of English is working on a new collection of poetry.
Associate Professor of English and renowned poet James Allen Hall was recently announced as a recipient of the prestigious 2025 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship in Poetry. The fellowship, which provides a grant of $25,000, will empower Hall to dedicate significant time to crafting the core poems of his forthcoming collection, Inheritance. The NEA Literature Fellowship program plays a vital role in supporting established American creative writers. By providing financial assistance, the program allows artists like Hall to dedicate themselves fully to their craft, resulting in a thriving literary landscape in the United States.
This is the second NEA grant Hall has received and marks a significant milestone in his illustrious career. The 2011 NEA grant helped in the formation of Hall’s critically acclaimed 2023 book, Romantic Comedy, which won the 2020 Levis Prize. The funding enabled crucial research trips to Spanish museums, allowing Hall to delve into the works of Goya, Picasso, and Caravaggio. These visual encounters, along with exploration of the Inquisition's impact on sexuality, deeply enriched the thematic tapestry of Romantic Comedy.
Inheritance promises to be an equally captivating exploration. The new poetry collection will delve into the intricate ways that family, history, and cultural narratives shape – and sometimes distort – our imaginations. Hall will explore the transformative power of imagination, its ability to reshape inherited burdens and guide them towards a more liberated sense of self.
"The NEA grant arrives at a pivotal moment," said Hall. “I’m writing new poems that turn away from the past, from memory, and towards what is possible. I’m grateful that the NEA fellowship arrives at the same moment as the College has granted me a sabbatical, and at the same moment that I was awarded a Civitella Ranieri fellowship for a residency in Italy. It’s my aim to one day team-teach a class on writing and art, pairing student visual artists with young poets. While the NEA grant certainly means a lot for my own writing, I think I’m most delighted because of the example I can set for my amazing Washington College students: I hope I am proof that art does pay, that what artists make is valuable and necessary, particularly in these times.”
Hall is a celebrated poet whose work has garnered critical acclaim. His first book of poetry, Now You’re the Enemy, won awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His second, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, was selected as the winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Press’s Essay Award, and the 2018 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award for Nonfiction Prose. In addition to the NEA, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council, the New York Foundation of the Arts, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, as well as the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His lyric essays have appeared in Story Quarterly, Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others, and one essay was selected as a “Notable Essay of the Year” in Best American Essays 2016.
When he’s not writing or in the classroom, Hall directs the Washington College Rose O’Neill Literary House on campus, which has fostered a sense of community for young writers who want to make a positive impact on the world for over 50 years. Find out more about Hall’s work at Washington here.
- Dominique Ellis Falcon