Frank X Walker & Jon Cherry
We are excited to share this special conversation with you, produced by our friends at Kentucky to the World, from The Kentucky Theatre. Founded in 2012, Kentucky to the World elevates the cultural and intellectual reputation of Kentucky on the global stage. Tune in above, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Earlier this month, our initiative, the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX), hosted The Golden Thread, an annual forum celebrating Kentucky’s arts, culture, and ideas, presented by Kentucky Performing Arts and in partnership with Kentucky to the World. Ahead of this gathering, Kentucky to the World was joined by Kentucky luminaries Frank X Walker (our Golden Thread 2026 emcee) and Jon Cherry for this conversation.
Multidisciplinary artist Frank X Walker holds the endowed C.R. Lezius Professorship in the Arts at the University of Kentucky and is the College of Arts and Sciences 2026-2027 Distinguished Professor. A Cave Canem Fellow and co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, he is the author of the award-winning children’s book A is for Affrilachia and thirteen collections of poetry, including Load in Nine Times (winner of the 2025 Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry) and Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (winner of the NAACP Image Award), and Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award).
Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Frank is the originator of the word Affrilachia and is dedicated to communicating how literacy and the arts impact our quality of life. The Lannan Poetry Fellowship Award recipient has degrees from the University of Kentucky and Spalding University as well as four honorary doctorates from the University of KY, Centre College, Spalding University, and Transylvania University.
“I think for a lot of people, we’re all afraid of something. We all have comfort zones. If you live in a way that’s about staying inside your comfort zones, I don’t think you get to grow. You don’t get to find out where your real limits are. I think that’s what artmaking is about. Teasing those borders - your own and other people’s.” -Frank X Walker
Jon Cherry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer whose work moves across disciplines with a single animating impulse: to find the true spirit of America in the people and moments that define it. His style has been described as deeply romantic, yet joyful. Jon is drawn to stories of politics, social inequity, housing insecurity, and the human weight of domestic policy. He was awarded with the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for his and the Getty team’s coverage of the January 6 Riot at the US Capitol.
Born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to parents in the US armed forces, Jon has spent his adult life earning the title he wears most proudly: Kentuckian. He brings a student’s mind and a holistic worldview to his practice, approaching each story as an invitation to interrogate how we see, feel, and make sense of the world around us. His love for public art and music has expanded that practice beyond the still image into projects that blur the lines between visual journalism, fine art, and community benefit. Jon is also trained in first aid, hostile environment operations, digital security, firearms and ballistics, and risk assessment.
“The lines that divide us are pretty blurry when you look directly at them and see the history behind them.” -Jon Cherry
Throughout this conversation, Frank and Jon reflect on the perceived divides between rural and urban Kentucky, their own upbringings and experiences of place & belonging, and the commonalities that bind the geographies of the Commonwealth.
We are grateful to folks across the country who have made tax-deductible contributions to Art of the Rural to make this conversation possible, and to the Ford Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of Art of the Rural's media programs.
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