Foster to receive Hall-Waters Prize

Contributed photo Author Patricia Foster poses for a photo.

Award-winning nonfiction author Patricia Foster will soon receive the Hall-Waters Prize from Troy University in a student-organized ceremony on April 12.

The Hall-Waters Prize is a lifetime achievement award given annually by Troy University to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts.

“Staying in the arts full-time gets harder and harder every year, and by every measure, Foster has not only survived, but thrived,” said Hall-Waters organizer and Chair of the English Department Kirk Curnutt. “She has a great story to tell about Southern identity, and family ties, too, that students will identify with.”

Foster, a native of Fairhope, Alabama is receiving the award for her 2023 memoir “Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter.” She is the professor emerita at the University of Iowa’s MFA Program and is the recipient of a 2020 Pushcart Prize, the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction and the SFA Prize for Fiction.

At the ceremony, Foster will read experts from her memoir and provide insight into what it takes to be a writer. The prize includes a $5,000 award.

The Hall-Waters prize is endowed by the late Dr. Wade Hall, a Troy alumnus, in memory of his parents Wade Hall, Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Waters. Dr. Hall was an author and is a former member of the faculty at the University of Florida and professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gregg Swem was a good friend of Dr. Hall and acts as an executive for his estate. Swem, who also aids Curnutt in picking the winner, said even though the prize is named after Dr. Hall’s parents, it preserves his friend’s desire to give back to students.

“Wade was not only the first one in his family to go to college, but he was the first one to graduate from high school, and he came from a pretty hardscrabble in life . . . he said that Troy provided an outlet,” Swem said. “He taught literature, and writing was important to him, and he thought that Troy students ought to have exposure to people like this.”

This is the third consecutive year in which senior English majors taking English 4495 (senior seminar) taught by Curnutt, are in charge of organizing and publicizing the ceremony.

“If they end up working in the arts as a career, they’re likely to work in arts management – running programs, creating outreach, sponsoring events – so the Hall-Waters ceremony is a baptism by fire,” Curnutt said. “We’re trying to show students the organizational exactitude that I wish somebody had taught me when I was young.”

Carlyn McInnis is a Dothan, Alabama native and one of Curnutt’s students. McInnis is one of several students who will be a panelist at the Hall-Waters ceremony. She said she is excited to interview Foster as her work has deeply inspired her.

“Foster weaves passion and an earnest desire for social change into every word she writes,” McInnis said. “Others should attend this ceremony not only for the accomplishments of this distinguished author, but for their own development as a student and person.

“I encourage anyone, regardless of major, to attend this ceremony to expand their world and learn to think for themselves, regardless of what others tell them to think.”

This year’s ceremony will be at 9:30 a.m. at the amphitheater in Janice Hawkins Cultural Arts Park, and everyone is invited to attend free of charge.