ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Asheville writer, poet, essayist and University of North Carolina Asheville professor Mildred Kinconco Barya was honored last week with the 2025 Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize.

The Jacobs/Jones prize is named for the pioneering African-American North Carolinian writers Harriet Jacobs and Thomas Jones. The recipient of the award is given $1000 and the possible publication of their piece in The Carolina Quarterly.

Barya’s winning essay, “Sing for the Women,” is all about the resilience of the body.

“It kind of reclaims the human body, specifically the female body, by celebrating the kinds of resiliences that specifically Black bodies have gone through,” Barya explained. “But it also acknowledges the knowledge and the contributions of the women who were brought here and were enslaved from the African continent.”

Those contributions, Barya said, are the kind that are not always acknowledged: for instance, knowledge of agriculture. “Sing for the Women” is as much about bodies of land as it is the human body.

“The subjects in this body of work is really the human body versus the body of land. Like the body of Earth, like Earth as a body,” Barya said. “What affects Earth always affects the human body, as well as everything that lives on it. But also, when there is violence in the human body, we can see how that kind of violence, or whatever goes on with the human body, can affect Earth.”

Barya is also dedicated to exploring violence between human bodies.

“The main point of conflict where the human bodies don’t get along is that one of the two may not recognize the other as human. You know, if we all recognized each other as humans, we would have less problems in my opinion,” Barya chuckled. “That’s the thing I’m wrestling with. How do you make somebody who doesn’t consider you human to understand or see you as human? Because you are. Because we are all human.”

The answer Barya proposes hinges on conversation and coexistence.

“I want humans to live together because we can’t not live together, you know? I’ve never met a human who is a single entity. Who doesn’t need other humans,” Barya said. “It’s hard to avoid being with other people. So, given that we actually will always be with other people, then it makes sense to work at our relations. So that being with other people becomes a nourishing, collaborative effort, and something that’s a source of joy rather than a burden.”

For those looking for a collaborative community of humans, Barya is the coordinator of Poetrio, a monthly three poet reading – hence the “trio” – at Malaprop’s Bookstore in downtown Asheville. Poetrio is held every first Sunday online and in person.

More of Barya’s work can be found on her website, www.mildredbarya.com.