“On Learning to Love the Sea” Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2022
Larry I. Palmer was selected as a Peter Taylor Fellow at Kenyon Review’s 2020 Writers Workshop.
“Call Me by Name: A Lifetime of Race and Relationships” in Presbyterian Outlook received honorable mention for personal experience from the Associated Church Press (ACP) 2019 Best of the Church Press awards.
“Urshel: The Beautiful Lost Sheep” was published in Blackbird and cited as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2017. Blackbird’s Introductions Reading Loop features the essay with a note from the editors:
Larry Palmer grew up with ten siblings in Arkansas and St. Louis, and his memoir-in-progress summons each of those siblings in turn as guides through his memories. “Urshel: The Beautiful Lost Sheep” looks at the brother who went away when Palmer was four years old, leaving one morning “with just the shirt on his back,” and who unexpectedly returns years later for their father’s funeral. Palmer, the other brother who left, stands as the child who listened, unnoticed, and has chosen narrative as the agent that can freeze time and articulate affection.
“Dream Walker” was published as a creative process piece in Blackbird’s annual Tracking the Muse feature with a note from the editors:
Larry Palmer maps out writing as a journey through dreams and space. These dreams come to him in various ways—reading poetry, taking long ruminative walks—but he always hopes to be receptive to “the earworms, the whispers, the shouts . . . that are trying to form a pattern of words,” something to guide him as a “dream walker.”
Palmer was a finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writers Award in 2015.
The “Haircut” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and cited as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2015.
Excerpts from “The Haircut” were read and recorded as part of the “Reading Out Loud” series, a collaboration between New England Review and the student oratory society at Middlebury College.
“The Haircut” appeared on the Tommy Hilfiger website as the “Editor’s Pick” in September 2014.
Scholarship Boy was named the Finalist of the 2018 AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction
Larry I. Palmer 