Associate Professor of English and renowned poet James Allen Hall was awarded a prestigious 2025 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship in Poetry. The fellowship grant of $25,000 will empower Hall to dedicate significant time to crafting his forthcoming poetry 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 fellowship Hall has received and marks a significant milestone in his illustrious career. The 2011 NEA grant helped support Hall’s critically acclaimed 2023 book, Romantic Comedy, which won the 2020 Levis Prize. The NEA funding enabled crucial research trips to Spanish museums, allowing Hall to delve into the works of Goya, Picasso, and Caravaggio. This, along with his exploration of the Inquisition’s impact on sexuality, deeply enriched the tapestry of Romantic Comedy.

Inheritance promises to be an equally captivating exploration of the intricate ways that family, history, and cultural narratives shape–and sometimes distort–our imaginations. Hall will explore the transformative power of imagination and its ability to reshape inherited burdens and guide them toward 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 arrived at the same moment as the College 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’s 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 book, 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, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 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, which has fostered a sense of community for young writers who want to make a positive impact on the world for over 50 years.