Jeff Worley is the author of six books and three chapbooks of poetry as well as an anthology from University Press of Kentucky titled What Comes Down to Us: 25 Contemporary Kentucky Poets. His first book, The Only Time There Is (1995), won the Mid-List Press first-book competition. His second, Happy Hour at the Two Keys Tavern, was named co-winner of the Society of Midland Authors Literary Competition and was awarded the 2006 Kentucky Book of the Year in Poetry.

Worley has received numerous other awards for his writing, including three Al Smith Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and his poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals in the past 45 years.