News & Observer reports Kenan also received the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2005, the state’s highest civilian award, and was made a fellow of the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2007.
Kenan was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2018.Much of Kenan's work centered on Black gay life in the South as well as his experiences being raised by three women.
His most celebrated work was a 1992 collection of short stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and named a notable book of the year by The New York Times.