In the fall of 1991, The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky sponsored a gala kick-off of its National Writer's Series by celebrating "Southern Writing" at the old prestigious Lexington Opera House. Invited authors for the occasion were three native Kentucky writers: James Still, Windell Berry and Bobbi Ann Mason. The fourth writer, the only African American and the only non-Kentuckian was Nikky Finney, a South Carolinian and visiting writer at the University of Kentucky. In that audience, listening, watching and feeling very loudly the special evening unfold, sat Frank X. Walker.

A close friend and collaborator of Finney's, a community organizer, a lover of literature, a sculptor and a poet in his own right, Walker was quickly loaded with a series of questions and realities. Whomever had chosen these writers had obviously not thought or known that there were any native African American Kentuckians whose works were deemed worthy of such fine literary company. Walker, a Danville native, began to wrestle with the question, "What was the face of Appalachia?"

There were no publications in Kentucky that had as yet cited his work or the writing of dozens of other native Black Kentuckians that he knew. Walker realized, out of much frustration, that there was no proper working medium for the ancient voices of Africans in Appalachia.

Out of that frustration, Walker looked up the word "Appalachian" in the dictionary. What he found shook him to the very soles of his feet. It read, "white residents of mountainous regions." He knew then, in the eyes of the world, he would have to rename himself and offer up that name to his community, if ever their voices were to be heard. Combining "Africa," the continent and the birthplace of his race and culture, "Appalachian," the birth spot of his family, the term "Affrilachian" was born. From that one word and those many desires to write and express the feelings of a proud prominent community, in the spring of 1992, the Affrilachian Poets stepped forward.

The Affrilachian Poets. They are sometimes in love, sometimes terrified, all the time searching for a wise and progressive path through this forest called life. The Affrilachian Poets. They are the coal black African voices of Appalachia. Their sound, their passion, their tenderness, their truth can never again be omitted from the full Appalachian chorus that rings out through the hills and valleys of the bluegrass.

-Nikky Finney

The founding members of the Affrilachian Poets are Kelly Norman Ellis, Nikki Finney, Frank X. Walker, Gerald Coleman, Thomas Aaron, Shanna Smith, Mitchell Douglass, Miysan Crosswhite, Daudra Scisney-Givens, Richard Donelan and Ricardo Nazario Colon. Additional members include Crystal Wilkinson, Bernard Clay, Julian Long, Paul Taylor, Dan Woo, Jude McPherson. Honorary members include Gurney Norman, Peter Harris, Nikky Giovanni, Henry Louis Gates, Opal Palmer Adisa et al.