Dr. Jesse Graves, an assistant professor in East Tennessee State University's department of literature and language, received the prestigious Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award given by Morehead State University in Kentucky.
The award, which includes a prize of $1,000, recognizes outstanding Appalachian writers in all genres. The first award was presented in 1996 to poet and novelist James Still and the list of winners includes regional writer Sharyn McCrumb and Ron Rash, an Appalachian poet, short story writer and novelist.
Graves, who claimed the 2012 New Faculty Award from the ETSU College of Arts and Sciences, is the recipient of the Appalachian Writers Association's Book of the Year Award in poetry for his first poetry collection, "Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine." That collection also won the Weatherford Award for poetry, presented to him by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association.