Dr. Raye
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rayehendrix.bsky.social
Dr. Raye
@rayehendrix.bsky.social
1.3K followers 810 following 120 posts
Poet ★ Author of What Good Is Heaven (Texas Review Press, 2024) & two poetry chapbooks ★ American Lit & Disability Studies PhD ★ capricorn ★ insufferable Auburn fan ★ Lefty Teacher in Tennessee ★ linktr.ee/raye.hendrix
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rayehendrix.bsky.social
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
March 21, 2025 at 4:35 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
February 2, 2025 at 7:07 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
how we feeling about tomorrow besties
January 20, 2025 at 3:50 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
Tomorrow is my birthday! I have a request! ❄️🤍
January 15, 2025 at 2:53 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
New tour dates! Let's hang out!!!
January 11, 2025 at 8:23 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
See you tonight, New Orleans!!!
December 15, 2024 at 4:33 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
December 13, 2024 at 7:21 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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 🩶🩶🩶
December 4, 2024 at 7:27 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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...
November 23, 2024 at 7:56 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
November 12, 2024 at 7:00 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
November 8, 2024 at 3:50 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
May 6, 2024 at 8:17 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
😈😈😈😈😈
An infographic in red, gray, and white displaying the cover of Raye's book, titled "What Good Is Heaven," and the announcement: Coming September 2024. Preorders opening in April.
March 2, 2024 at 9:43 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
✨ 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!!!!!!!
February 27, 2024 at 1:29 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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
February 4, 2024 at 2:51 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
January 23, 2024 at 9:58 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
January 3, 2024 at 1:42 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
September 9, 2023 at 10:47 PM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
August 15, 2023 at 7:34 AM
rayehendrix.bsky.social
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.
August 4, 2023 at 11:24 PM