Hazard to host author Willie Davis on Kentucky Writers tour May 16

Hazard is getting the first stop on the 2026 Kentucky Writers on the Road tour, and the choice fits the city as well as the calendar. On Saturday, May 16, from 4 to 6 p.m., author Willie Davis will read at Bobby Davis Museum & Park, 234 Walnut Street, in a program meant to bring Kentucky writing directly into Perry County.

The James Baker Hall Foundation is working with Mandi Fugate at the Spotted Newt Bookstore on the Hazard event, which will include readings by Davis from his award-winning book Honeysuckle Season, along with other readings and music. The foundation says the stop opens the four-city 2026 series, which will also include Louisville, Newport and Morehead. For Hazard readers, it is a chance to see a statewide literary program without leaving town.

The appearance carries extra local meaning because Honeysuckle Season is set in Hazard. Foundation and publisher materials describe the book as a collection of linked stories that unfold over one long day after a car accident involving a circus van. The book was chosen as the 2025 James Baker Hall Book Award winner by independent judge and author Toni Ann Johnson, making the May 16 reading both a tour stop and a homecoming of sorts for the setting that inspired the work.

The foundation says Kentucky Writers on the Road is part of its mission to create spaces where community can happen and to invest in future Kentucky writers. That mission lands in a familiar place for Hazard residents, where Bobby Davis Museum & Park is already a downtown landmark and memorial founded by Lawrence Davis. For Perry County, the event adds a literary gathering to the local calendar at a venue with its own civic and historical weight.

With Willie Davis as the featured reader and Hazard serving as the kickoff site, the tour begins with a stop that is both practical and symbolic. It gives local families, students and aspiring writers a clear place to gather for readings, music and conversation, while placing Hazard at the center of a statewide arts effort on one of its first big dates of the year.