John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 2008; Robert Penn Warren Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers; Guggenheim Fellowship; NEA Fellowship; TN Arts Council Individual Artists' Grant; Travel Writer of the Year (1994) from the Alabama Bureau of Travel; graduate students in the University of Tennessee’s Department of English voted Wier the department’s “most outstanding professor in the classroom; Awarded Hodges Distinguished Teaching Char, Univ. of Tennessee. Faculty, Sewanee Writers Conference.