School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) professor Jeff Weddle won the Florida Authors and Publishers Association’s (FAPA) 2024 Gold President’s Book Award for Poetry for his book, Driving the Lost Highway. Weddle received the award on Saturday, August 3.
“It was a wonderful surprise. I was just elated when I first learned that I had won anything,” said Weddle. “And to be perfectly honest, I would have been elated if it had been a bronze. You know, just the fact that somebody read my work, considered it and enjoyed it – that means more to me than just about anything.”
Driving the Lost Highway is an introspective collection of poems, exploring themes of memory and morality using a highway as a connecting motif. One of the poems in Driving the Lost Highway is titled “The Wild.” Weddle said:
There are different stories that happened in this poem that more or less converge, but don’t quite. And I think that leaves an air of mystery to it. It brings together the natural world of the apes and tigers, predators and praying and people with murder and infidelity” said Weddle, “I like to think it’s my most mature work. I like [my poetry] to have, you know, the essence of truth in them. And I guess I succeeded in that with this book.
Weddle is known for his unique poetry collections, like Advice for Cannibals or There’s More to It Than That and his book, Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, which won the 2007 Welty Prize for Interpretive Scholarship in the Humanities. Weddle’s latest book is titled A Letter to Xhevdet Bajraj, a collection of poetry addressed to Fadil Bajraj, Weddle’s publisher and translator, and his brother Xhevdet Bajraj, a well-known poet from Kosovo who recently passed away.
Weddle is a professor in the university’s SLIS department, where he teaches courses in book history, book collection and public library management. SLIS teaches students how to examine and manage information in all its forms, be it a book in a library, a digital file in an online archive or an antique in a museum.
FAPA, a nonprofit organization that presents to authors and publishers in Florida, awards books they feel represent creativity and excellence in writing and design, using judges that range from publishers to librarians. While its home is in Florida, FAPA’s book awards accepts submissions from across the U.S., sharing resources and connections with its members.
To find out more about FAPA, it’s book award and how submit work you can visit their website at https://www.myfapa.org/.