The Gullah people of St. Helena Island, South Carolina, still relate that their people wanted to “catch the learning” after northern abolitionists founded Penn School in 1862, less than six months after the Union army captured the South Carolina sea islands. In this broad history Orville Vernon Burton and Wilbur Cross range across the past 150 years to reacquaint us with the far-reaching impact of a place where many daring and innovative social justice endeavors had their beginnings.

Penn Center’s earliest incarnation was as a refuge where escaped and liberated enslaved people could obtain formal liberal arts schooling, even as the Civil War raged on sometimes just miles away. Penn Center then earned a place in the history of education by providing agricultural and industrial arts training for African Americans after Reconstruction and through the Jim Crow era, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Later, during the civil rights movement, Penn Center made history as a safe meeting place for organizations like Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Peace Corps. Today, Penn Center continues to build on its long tradition of leadership in progressive causes. As a social services hub for local residents and as a museum, conference, and education complex, Penn Center is a showcase for activism in such areas as cultural, material, and environmental preservation; economic sustainability; and access to health care and early learning.

Orville Vernon Burton (Author)
ORVILLE VERNON BURTON former Creativity Professor of Humanities at Clemson University and emeritus University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar, University Scholar, and professor of history, African American studies, and sociology at the University of Illinois and is the author or editor of twenty books including The Age of Lincoln.

Wilbur Cross (Author)
WILBUR CROSS former Time editor and author of some fifty books, including Gullah Culture in America.

In The History of the Poetry Society of South Carolina: 1920 – 2021″ Jim Lundy chronicles the first 100 years of the organization on the occasion of its centennial. In 1920 The Poetry Society of South Carolina took its calling from the pre-existing, the Poetry Society of America, with its aim specific to the south, to encourage all southern poets. This was a novel idea at the time, for the South was lagging behind culturally, a lingering result of the Civil War. The society grew and continued to prosper in its first decade, bringing in nationally and internationally known speakers and critics and giving large cash awards for poetry. Critics and poets turned to the group as the leader of the literary arts revival in the South; many states soon founded similar societies. Although other southern groups and schools, such as the Fugitive poets of Nashville, outstripped and eclipsed the Poetry Society of South Carolina, it nevertheless had a profound impact on the decade. Writers affiliated with it won Pulitzer Prizes and became the ranking poets of their day, later moving on to prose, songwriting, opera, playwriting and drama. The impact of the society was greater than literary, however. As an umbrella organization, it fostered the cultural rebirth of the area and stimulated the growth and development of many other agencies, such as the Preservation Society of Charleston and the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals. The society declined in national prominence by the end of the 1920s, and over the following years its fortunes waxed and waned. However, now it has continued into the twenty-first century as a thriving group with much credit to Jim Lundy’s leadership in preserving its history, spearheading diversity, and providing a platform for contemporary poetic expression.

Son of a career Navy chaplain and an Alabama-born mother with eighteenth-century South Carolina roots, Thomas L. Johnson is a retired librarian emeritus from the University of South Carolina (South Caroliniana Library) in Columbia, where he also taught English. He has been publishing prize-winning poetry since the 1970s, and he has won awards for his short fiction and for his work as an editor. For many years he edited the poetry page of the Columbia-based news monthly The Point. As a field archivist for the South Caroliniana Library, he was instrumental in the public rediscovery of the work of Columbia photographer Richard Samuel Roberts. A True Likeness, the book on Robert’s work Co edited by Johnson and Philip C. Dunn (1986), won a coveted Lillian Smith award from the southern Regional Council. In 2002 he co-edited with Nina J. Root, another book of photographs, Camera Man’s Journey: Julian Dimocks South. His poetry collection The Costume: New and Selected Poems was published in 2010. Johnson currently lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he’s been active in the Hub City Writers Project, the Spartanburg Art Museum, and the West Main Artist Co-op (as a printmaker). He also serves on the board of the Birchwood Center for the Arts and Folklife in Pickens County. He is a life member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of authors.

The stunning, groundbreaking account of “the ways in which our nation has tried to come to grips with its original sin” (Providence Journal)

“Denmark Vesey’s Garden reveals that the long struggle over how Americans remember slavery has been inseparable from the long struggle for racial justice.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning

Hailed by the New York Times as a “fascinating and important new historical study that examines . . . the place where the ways slavery is remembered mattered most,” Denmark Vesey’s Garden “maps competing memories of slavery from abolition to the very recent struggle to rename or remove Confederate symbols across the country” (The New Republic). Denmark Vesey’s Garden reveals the deep roots of present-day controversies and traces them to the capital of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the slaves brought to the United States stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof murdered nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, which was co-founded by Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822.

As they examine public rituals, controversial monuments, and competing musical traditions, “Kytle and Roberts’s combination of encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston’s history and empathy with its inhabitants’ past and present struggles make them ideal guides to this troubled history” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A work the Civil War Times called “a stunning contribution,” Denmark Vesey’s Garden exposes a hidden dimension of America’s deep racial divide, joining the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting interpretations of slavery’s enduring legacy in the United States.

Born in Conway, South Carolina, one of three children, Finney is the only daughter of Ernest A. Finney, Jr., Civil Rights Attorney and retired Chief Justice of the state of South Carolina, and Frances Davenport Finney, elementary school teacher. Finney’s father began his career as a civil rights attorney, and in 1961, served as Head Legal Counsel for the Friendship 9, black junior college students arrested and charged when trying to desegregate McCrory’s lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Both Finney’s parents were raised on the family-owned land: Justice Finney on a farm in Virginia, and Frances Davenport Finney on a farm in Newberry, SC. Themes of the African-American relationship to the land surface throughout Finney’s work.

Nikky Finney is the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina, with appointments in both the Department of English Language and Literature and the African American Studies Program, which she proudly notes is forty-six years strong. Nikky Finney’s work, is in book form and video, including her now legendary acceptance speech for the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry shown above.

James Lafayette Dickey (February 2, 1923 – January 19, 1997) was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award. Dickey was best known for his novel Deliverance (1970) which was adapted into an acclaimed film of the same name.

His popularity exploded after the film version of his novel Deliverance was released in 1972. Dickey had a cameo in the film as a sheriff. The poet was invited to read his poem “The Strength of Fields” at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977. Dickey was U.S. Poet Laureate 1966-1968.

Dickey died on January 19, 1997, six days after his last class at the University of South Carolina, where from 1968 he taught as poet-in-residence. Dickey spent his last years in and out of hospitals, afflicted with severe alcoholism, jaundice and later pulmonary fibrosis.

Donald Patrick “Pat” Conroy (October 26, 1945 – March 4, 2016) was an American author who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs; his books The Water is Wide, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini were made into films, the latter two being Oscar nominated. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature. Conroy was a graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. 

On February 15, 2016, Conroy stated on his Facebook page that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. He died on March 4, 2016, at 70 years old. Conroy’s funeral was held on March 8, 2016, at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Cassandra King Conroy, who has been called “the Queen of Southern storytelling,” is the author of four novels, Making Waves, The Sunday Wife, The Same Sweet Girls and Queen of Broken Hearts, as well as numerous short stories, essays and articles. Moonrise, her fifth novel, is set in Highlands, North Carolina. The widow of acclaimed author Pat Conroy, Cassandra resides in Beaufort, South Carolina, where she is honorary chair of the Pat Conroy Literary Center.

Ted Phillips Jr graduated from Porter-Gaud School in Charleston and served as a page to the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond while in high school. He was a graduate of Harvard College, where he was editor of The Harvard Lampoon, and a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law. A local historian, Ted was a biographer of the Charleston artist, West Fraser (Charleston in My Time: The Paintings of West Fraser), and author of a history of Magnolia Cemetery, City of the Silent. Taking its title from the poem that William Gilmore Simms delivered at the 1850 consecration of the cemetery, City of the Silent is a unique guide to some of the complex personalities who have contributed to the Holy City’s rich culture.

North Carolina novelist Allan Gurganus paid tribute to the late Ted Ashton Phillips, Jr.: “As a gent, a born archivist, and the inhabitant of a small if exclusive town…He proved himself to be the reverse of a snob. As a lawyer he found nuanced talents among the many convicts of his acquaintance; he also attributed raw humanity to those society doyens seeming most frosty in their loftiness. Ted wanted his funeral to be a party; he left a lovely budget for that. This is just one of the many prior things that portrays his personality well.” City of the Silent includes a foreword by Josephine Humphreys, Charleston writer and longtime friend of the author, and an afterword by Phillips’s daughter Alice McPherson Phillips.

Elizabeth O’Neill Verner was an artist, author, lecturer, and preservationist who was one of the leaders of the Charleston Renaissance. She has been called “the best-known woman artist of South Carolina of the twentieth century. Verner made etchings, drypoints, drawings, and (after 1934) pastels of Charleston, favoring buildings, street scenes, and landscapes. She worked at a studio within her residence at 38 Tradd Street. She also became a portraitist known for representing African-Americans, especially the city’s flower vendors. She worked occasionally as a book illustrator, illustrating DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy.Stylistically, her paintings are realism with impressionist overtones, while her etchings and drawings are crisply detailed studies.

Verner traveled extensively, visiting Japan (1937), Europe, the Caribbean, and Mexico. While in Kyoto, Japan in 1937, she learned Japanese brushwork, and produced about 12 etchings. In 1946, Verner published “Other Places,” which made up 42 illustrations of places other than Charleston, accompanied by her own commentary. Her work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and museums across southeastern America. The South Carolina Arts Commission awards the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Awards for the Arts in her honor.

Elizabeth Verner Hamilton, daughter of Ebenezer Pettigrew and Elizabeth O’Neill Verner was a Charleston author, poet and publisher. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the College Charleston and did postgraduate work at the North Carolina School of Library Science, and the University of the Philippines. She was the wife of diplomat John A. Hamilton and the President of the Tradd Street Press and Director of the Studio-Museum of Elizabeth O’Neill Verner. She also served on the Board of directors Havana Symphony. Her books include:  When Walls Are High; Storm Center; and Evgard: Poems.

Atlanta native and 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner for Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Fox Uhry, wrote the screenplay for the 1992 film, Rich in Love, the award winning novel by South Carolina native Josephine Humphreys.

Josephine Humphreys is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of Dreams of Sleep, which won the 1985 Hemingway Foundation Award for a first work of fiction. A native of Charleston, South Carolina,  Humphrey’s novels have been inspired not only by the landscape of Charleston but also from her own life there.

Rich in Love, probably her best-known novel, was made into a 1992 film of the same title starring Albert Finney and Jill Clayburgh. Humphreys was the winner of the 1984 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Dreams of Sleep, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lyndhurst Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

Starkey Flythe Jr., a writer, poet, past editor of the Saturday Evening Post, published in Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize volumes, and won an Iowa Short Fiction award. His poems, collected in three volumes, appeared in magazines including The New Yorker. His stories were anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and the O. Henry Prize volumes. He was the winner of a PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in prose, and a South Carolina Arts Association literature Fellowship. Mr. Flythe’s poems were widely published in magazines, including the poem “Greeks” in the August 8, 2011, edition of The New Yorker. Most recently, his poem, “Katherine, locked in the bathroom” won the Constance E. Pultz Prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. He published three collections of poetry in his lifetime: Paying the Anesthesiologist, They Say Dancing, and The Futile Lesson of Glue, which won the Violet Reed Haas Award. His subjects were wide-ranging, from pop culture to the rituals of death, from mistletoe to Jayne Mansfield’s bosom. As he once said, the poems are “essentially about how things can’t be put back together.” 

Kurtis Lamkin, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, has toured the country playing the kora, a type of African harp. In the past he has hosted MultiKultiMove, a reading series involving writers from across the world, and produced an animated poem for PBS: “The Fox’s Manifesto.” He also produced the radio series Living Proof: Contemporary Black Literature as a member of the Metamorphosis Writers Collective. His book, King of the Real World, was published in 1985. His writings have been featured widely in such publications as the Nebula Journal of Contemporary Literature, Painted Bride Quarterly, Black American Literature Forum and Transfer. He was also published in NewCity Voices: An Anthology of Black Literature.

“Beautiful sailboats, beautiful women, plenty of recreational drugs, it couldn’t get much better from their perspective,” journalist Jason Ryan tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. But back in the 1970s, the U.S. fight against drugs — especially marijuana — wasn’t a war at all. In fact, for the “gentlemen smugglers” bringing bales of pot and bricks of hash into Florida and South Carolina, it was a nonstop party. Mostly college-educated and averse to violence, they were in it for fun more than money — though the money didn’t hurt.

Jason Ryan is the author of three books: “Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs“; “Hell-Bent: One Man’s Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob“; and “Race to Hawaii: The 1927 Dole Derby and the Thrilling First Flights That Opened the Pacific.” He is a graduate of Georgetown University and lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Carl T. Smith began writing it was at the urging of best college bud, Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. After a career in professional theatre and music he moved to South Carolina and penned his first novel, Nothing Left to Lose. Intrigued by the scenic beauty of the lowcountry and its soft underbelly of crime he wrote his second novel, the best-selling Lowcountry Boil, which received several prizes and, again four film options. His other works include Louisiana Burn, Carolina Fire, A Season For Killing, and Matthew’s Island.

Below, South Carolina Poet Paul Allen reads among those with the “gift of gab” enjoying Smithwick’s, Guinness and Shepard’s Pie at the White House Pub in Limerick, , Ireland:

Before retirement Paul Allen taught courses in poetry, form and meter, and writing song lyrics at The College of Charleston, in Charleston, SC, as Professor of English. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Northwest Review, Southern Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Southwest Review, Ontario Review, New England Review, Iowa Review, Puerto Del Sol, and The Southern Review, as well as in several anthologies, including Odd Angles of Heaven: Contemporary Poetry by People of Faith (Harold Shaw, Publishers), Real Things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry (Indiana University Press), The Seagull Reader: Poetry (W. W. Norton), and Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry: South Carolina (Texas Consortium Press). He has received the South Carolina Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry twice, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award (George Mason University), the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize from the University of North Texas Press, the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fellowship, the John Williams Andrews Narrative Poetry Prize from Poet Lore, the Distinguished Research Award from The College of Charleston (2007), and a Pushcart (XXXII, 2008). His books include American Crawl (UNT Press, 1997) and His Longing (FootHills Press, 2005). He has appeared on NPR and has read at Callenwolde Arts Center in Atlanta, the Iota Club and Café (Washington DC), and the Millennial Stage of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The eighth of 10 children, Sanders is a fourth-generation farmer. She cultivates peaches and vegetables with her brother, on Sanders Peach Farm and Roadside Market, located in Filbert, South Carolina. In the video created to celebrate her 2011 Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, Sanders tells how her father, a rural school teacher, purchased the land in approximately 1915 and began successfully cultivating peaches in the early 1920s.

Dorinda ‘Dori’ Sanders (born c.1935, York County, South Carolina) is an African-American novelist, food writer and farmer. Her first novel, Clover (1990), was a bestseller, and won a 1990, Lilian Smith Book Award. Clover was made into an American film that first aired on USA Network starring Elizabeth McGovern, Ernie Hudson, Zelda Harris and Beatrice Winde. White Sara Kate (McGovern) marries Gaten Hill (Hudson), a black widowed father. Shortly after their wedding, Gaten dies in an auto crash. So Sara has to take care of Gaten’s daughter, Clover (Harris). Problem is, she and Clover have not exactly bonded and several of Gaten’s friends and relatives object to her being Clover’s guardian.

George Singleton was the longstanding teacher of fiction writing and editing at the South Carolina Governor’s School For The Arts & Humanities in Greenville, SC. In 2009, Singleton was a Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2011 he was awarded the Hillsdale Award for Fiction by The Fellowship of Southern Writers.In 2013, Singleton accepted the John C. Cobb Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Wofford College where he currently teaches. Singleton was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers in April 2015, and was awarded the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence in 2016.

A former journalist, Betsy Teter is a co-founder of the nonprofit Hub City Writers Project, based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which cultivates readers and nourishes writers through its independent press, community bookshop, and diverse literary programming. At Hub City Press, she selects five to six books a year in the genres of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, and regional culture. A native of Spartanburg, she is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the mother of two sons who work in Brooklyn. Betsy is the 2017 individual winner of the South Carolina Governor’s Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for the Arts.

John Lane teaches creative writing and environmental literature at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. He is one of the founders of a publishing company, an artist residency and the Spartanburg Hub City Writers Project as well as a project to develop an environmental studies center from an historic textile mill office in Spartanburg County. Lane also was instrumental in founding The Southern Nature Project, a group of environmental writers with Southern roots and allegiances.

Sue Monk Kidd (born August 12, 1948) spent the early days of her writing career penning memoirs, going on to publish her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, in 2002.

Set in Tiburon, South Carolina, in 1964, the novel tells the intertwined stories of fourteen-year-old Lily Melissa Owens, who is white and struggling to discover the past of the mother she saw killed; and Rosaleen, Lily’s African American caretaker whose determined attempt to vote results in her savage beating at the hands of three white men. Lily and Rosaleen hitchhike to Tiburon, where they are taken in by the Boatwright sisters, under whose beneficent influence and guidance Lily and Rosaleen come to terms with both the present and the past. The novel spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list and has been published in thirty-five countries. It won the 2003 SEBA Book of the Year Award, the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Award for a paperback, and the 2005 Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award. In 2008 The Secret Life of Bees was adapted into a major motion picture by Fox Searchlight starring Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah and directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood.

Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, was published by Viking in 2005. Set on a South Carolina barrier island, the novel tells the story of Jessie Sullivan, a married woman who falls in love with a Benedictine monk. A New York Times bestseller, the book has been translated into twenty-four languages. It won the Quill Award in General Fiction in 2005 and was adapted into a television movie by Lifetime in 2006.

Susan Laughter Meyers has won many awards and prizes including the 2013 Edward Stanley Award for Prairie Schooner, the 2013 SC Academy of Author’s Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship, and the 2011 Verna Ubben Fellowship to Virginia Center or the Creative Arts. Her poems have appeared in major journals, including The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, as well as on-line sites, such as Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Poems have appeared in several anthologies, a most recent is The Crafty Poet.

Dorothea Olivia Benton Frank was a best-selling American novelist. She was born and grew up on Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina. Dorothea’s writing career started because of a desire to purchase the family house on Sullivan’s Island after her mother died in 1993. Her husband did not want to purchase the house so she vowed to write a book and use the proceeds to purchase the house. She was not able to purchase the family home but eventually she purchased another home on Sullivan’s Island with money she earned writing.

Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Her first novel Bastard Out of Carolina was published in 1992. It was later adapted as a film of the same name, directed by Anjelica Huston. The book and film both generated controversy because of the graphic content. It was initially banned for distribution in Canada, but it was reversed on appeal. In November 1997, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a State Board of Education decision to ban the book in public high schools because of its graphic content.

Born in 1926 in Columbia, South Carolina, and a University of South Carolina (USC) graduate, William Price Fox studied under Caroline Gordon, taught writing at the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and was the Writer-In-Residence at USC until 2007. As a novelist, he said he tried to make every book different from the one before and dislikes being compared to anyone else or being pigeon-holed. His novelistic work constitutes a veritable autobiography – coming of age in post-World War II Columbia, South Carolina, in Moonshine Light, Moonshine Bright (1967); the country music scene in Ruby Red (1971); the hustle and bustle of NY sales in Dixiana Moon (1981); the life of an air force pilot in The Wild Blue Yonder (2002). Among his non-fiction works are his account of Hurricane Hugo in The Lunatic Wind (1992), his chronicling of the demise of the American drive-in movie, his verbal portrait gallery of various Southern personages, high and low, to be found in his magazine articles (for The Atlantic, The Saturday Evening Post, and others) and in his book Chitlin’ Strut and Other Madrigals (1983), as well as contributions to many publications. Musician Bruce Springsteen wrote his famous song “Darlington County” based on Fox’s book, Dixiana Moon.

His educational television series, The Writer’s Workshop, was a marvelous series of world-class authors discussing their craft and careers. It was filmed on the University of South Carolina campus in the early 1980’s. Fellow South Carolina professor James Dickey was an interviewee, as were Tom Wolfe, William Styron, and Reynolds Price.

Below see part of the Dickey interview with William Price Fox.

Poet Susan Ludvigson is professor emeritus of English at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She is the author of ten collections of poetry; her books include Northern Lights (1981), The Swimmer (1982), The Beautiful Noon of No Shadow (1986), To Find the Gold (1990), Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming (1993), Trinity (1996), Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems (2000), and Escaping the House of Certainty (2006). Ludvigson has received a Fulbright Fellowship to Yugoslavia and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Scott Ely taught fiction writing at Winthrop University in South Carolina. Ely wrote hundreds of short stories and was best known for his sniper novel “Starlight” which he wrote from his experience as a soldier in Vietnam. His work has been translated in Italy, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Japan. There were also UK editions of the novels published. He and his wife, retired Winthrop English professor and poet Susan Ludvigson, split their time between homes in Rock Hill, South Carolina and France.

A South Carolina native and professor of English at Clemson university, Bill Koon is the author  of Hank Williams, So Lonesome, a biography about the life and music of the country music legend.  Formerly head of the English Department. Koon was a Fulbright Professor in southern studies to Austria and director of a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on southern studies. His other works include: Classic Southern Humor and Old Glory and the Stars and Bars.

Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, whose stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself. During World War II Spillane enlisted in the Army Air Corps, becoming a fighter pilot and a flight instructor. While flying over Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, he said, “That is where I want to live.” In 1989, Hurricane Hugo ravaged his Murrells Inlet house to such a degree it had to be almost entirely reconstructed. Spillane died July 17, 2006 at his home in Murrells Inlet. In July 2011, the community of Murrells Inlet named U.S 17 Business the “Mickey Spillane Waterfront 17 Highway.”

Born Alexandra Elizabeth Braid in Charleston, South Carolina, Alexandra Ripley attended the elite Ashley Hall and received a degree from Vassar College  with a major in Russian. Ripley was best known as the author of Scarlett (1991), written as a sequel to Gone with the Wind.

Charleston (1981), Alexandra Ripley’s first historical novel, was a bestseller, as were her next books On Leaving Charleston (1984), The Time Returns (1985), and New Orleans Legacy (1987).

Dubose Heyward was born in 1885 in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a descendant of Judge Thomas Heyward, Jr, a South Carolinian signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. Heyward met his wife Dorothy when they were both at the MacDowell Colony (an artists’ colony in New Hampshire) in 1922.

Dubose Heyward wrote fiction and short stories during the 1920s and 1930s that focused on the lives of black Americans living on the Charleston waterfront. Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, dramatized his most successful novels, resulting in major Broadway successes, namely Porgy & Bess, the first U.S. folk opera, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics co-written by Ira Gershwin and Heyward.

It was a 1925 novel, then a Broadway play, before George Gershwin worked with Charleston novelist DuBose Heyward to create what’s been called “the first great American opera”, Porgy and Bess.

In a 1932 letter, Gershwin reaches out to Heyward with the idea of working together to write an opera based on Heyward’s novel Porgy. The letter, dated in late March, found the Heywards, not in Charleston but at their summer in the mountains of North Carolina.

Many of the songs from the classic Porgy & Bess have been performed and recorded countless times over the decades, including “Summertime,” “I Love You Porgy,” and “I’m On My Way,” to name just a few. Heyward and his wife later dramatized another of his books, Mamba’s Daughters, with much success. Heyward then wrote the screenplay for the 1933 motion picture based on Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson.

Dubose Heyward was also one of the founders of the Poetry Society of South Carolina the first and oldest poetry organization in America. Heyward died from a heart attack in June 1940, at the age of 54, at his summer home in the North Carolina mountains.

Harlan Greene is an American writer and historian. He has published both fiction and non-fiction works. Greene’s first novel, Why We Never Danced the Charleston (1984), is a gay fiction cult classic that examines the underbelly of Charleston’s gay culture in the 1920s. Greene artfully crafts a southern gothic tale that delves into the depths of Charleston’s historic and dark past as seen through the characters Hirsch Hess, Ned Grimke, and an unnamed narrator.

What the Dead Remember (1991) is Greene’s coming-of-age story. Set in and around Charleston, the narrative follows an unnamed gay protagonist as he explores his identity, sexuality, and the closeted gay culture of Charleston society. The story ends with the protagonist’s diagnosis with AIDS. What the Dead Remember was the winner of the 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction.

Widely considered an authority on the history of Charleston, and specifically the Charleston Renaissance, Greene has authored several nonfiction works related to this subject matter. Charleston: City of Memory (1987) offers up a brief history of Charleston enhanced with photographs by N. Jane Iseley. Greene’s 2001 release Mr. Skylark: John Bennett and the Charleston Renaissance is a biographical account of John Bennett, a writer, expert on Gullah folklore, and a major figure of the Charleston Renaissance.

As a kid growing up on the south side of Chicago, Dr. Bernard Powers never dreamed he’d become a professor emeritus of history at the College of Charleston. When he sat in the pews of his A.M.E. church with his parents and his younger brother, he never imagined he’d write Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822–1855, which would be the first of its kind and be awarded Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book, or co-write We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel. Dr. Powers went on to get his master’s and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, studying American history and concentrating in both African American history and African history. From there, he worked as an administrator in the dean of education’s office and a social science lecturer at Malcom X College. In 1978, he joined the history faculty at Northeastern Illinois University and – over the next 14 years – served as department chair and director of their graduate program.

At the College of Charleston Dr. Powers has served as president of the Avery Research Center’s advisory board, received the College’s Distinguished Advising Award in 2011 and was named professor emeritus of history in 2018 – has not only seen African American studies become a major, he’s been a part of the establishing the College’s African Studies Program, the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World and, most recently, the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston (CSSC).

Marjory Wentworth is the New York Times bestselling author of Out of Wonder, Poems Celebrating Poets (with Kwame Alexander and Chris Colderley). She is the co-writer of We Are Charleston, Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel, with Herb Frazier and Dr. Bernard Powers and Taking a Stand, The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Mendez.  She is co-editor with Kwame Dawes of Seeking, Poetry and Prose inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, and the author of the prizewinning children’s story Shackles.  Her books of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle and New and Selected Poems. Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize six times.She is the current poet laureate of South Carolina. Wentworth serves on the Board of Advisors at The Global Social Justice Practice Academy, and she is a 2020 National Coalition Against Censorship Free Speech is for Me Advocate. She teaches courses in writing, social justice and banned books at The College of Charleston. 

Nick C. Lindsay, is the son of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay and Elizabeth Conner Lindsay. His father was considered a founder of modern singing poetry and one of the best known poets in the U.S. in the early 20th century.  Vachel is quoted by Edgar Lee Masters: “I think that my first poetic impulse is for music; second a definite conception with the ring of the universe…” poetry is “fundamentally as a performance, as an aural and temporal experience…meant…to be chanted, whispered, belted out, sung, amplified by gesticulation and movement, and punctuated by shouts and whoops.”

Nick C. Lindsay lived an interesting life in Edisto, South Carolina, writing books and giving presentations of his own poetry and recitations of his father’s (Vachel Lindsay’s) poems throughout the United States and Europe, reciting most of his father’s poems from memory.

Excerpt from And I’m Glad:

Dr. James Hutchisson is professor of American literature and Southern Studies at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.   Dr. Hutchisson has 10 books and more than 60 articles of literary and historical criticism and nonfiction to his credit. Dr. Hutchisson’s definitive biography of Edgar Allan Poe, entitled: POE, presents a critical overview of the Virginia gentleman’s themes, techniques, and imaginative preoccupations. Dr. Hutchisson’s most recent book, Ernest Hemingway:  A New Life, was hailed by The Washington Post as a “deftly-written…gentler but sadder look at an American master.”  

For the past several years Dr. Hutchisson has been writing about the literary and artistic culture of twentieth century Charleston and its association with national literary movements. Beginning in 1920 Charleston, South Carolina, underwent an unprecedented cultural revival known as the Southern Renaissance. Edited by Harlan Greene and Jim Hutchisson, Renaissance in Charleston re-creates the historical, social, economic, and political contexts through which its central participants moved. Discussed are such figures as John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Beatrice Ravenel, DuBose Heyward, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, Alfred Hutty, Julia Peterkin, Laura Bragg, and Edwin A. Harleston.

The essays also underscore the significance and growth of such cultural institutions as the Poetry Society of South Carolina, the Charleston Museum, and the Gibbes Art Gallery.

David Farrow was born in Charleston, he was a son of John A. Farrow and Emily Ravenel Farrow. He grew up on South Battery on the peninsula. A graduate of the High School of Charleston and the College of Charleston, Farrow also studied at Christ School in the North Carolina mountains and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where he worked in Strom Thurmond’s office. He was also a feature writer for Charleston’s newspaper, The Post and Courier.

After his father’s death, Farrow moved to New York to shop a written novel. Unsuccessful after a year he returned to Charleston. By 1996, he had started Charleston’s first ghost tour, the first bawdy tour and the largest walking tour company with the most locations. That year he started and hosted a morning drive-time talk radio show which discussed local history and politics. He published “The Root of All Evil” in 1997, a crime novel set in Charleston, fusing Low country lore and customs into the age-old battle of good versus evil. It became a regional best seller in three months.

Dr David Aiken taught English at the College of Charleston and the Citadel. He is a founding member of the William Gilmore Simms Society and has written or edited more than fifty articles and books on Simms and other Southern writers, including Fire in the Cradle: Charleston’s Literary Heritage, where Aiken presents Charleston’s literature from colonial to modern times. In A City Laid Waste Aiken reacquaints the reader with William Gilmore Simms’ riveting detail of the destruction of South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, as Gen. William T. Sherman brought his scorched-earth campaign to a hotbed of secessionism. Describing the account as a Southern masterpiece, Simms historian David Aiken provides both a historical and literary context for Simms’ reportage.

William Gilmore Simms was born on April 17, 1806,in Charleston, South Carolina. Simms wrote several popular books between 1830 and 1860, sometimes focusing on the pre-colonial and colonial periods of Southern history, and replete with local color. His first hit was The Yemassee (1835, about the Yemassee War of 1715 in the South Carolina low country). Simms also published eight novels set in South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, beginning with The Partisan (1835), which was perhaps Simms’s most-read novel, and Katharine Walton (1851). Other South Carolina-related books included Mellichampe (1836), The Kinsmen (1841), Woodcraft (1854), The Forayers (1855), Eutaw (1856), and Joscelyn (1867).

At first, Southern readers, especially those in his hometown of Charleston, did not support Simms’s work, in part because he lacked an aristocratic background. Eventually, however, he was referred to as the Southern version of James Fenimore Cooper, and Charleston residents invited him into their prestigious St. Cecilia Society. (The St. Cecilia Ball is described in Alexandra Ripley’s novel, Scarlett, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind.) In 1845, Simms published The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845); a compilation of short stories. Edgar Allan Poe thought the collection “decidedly the most American of American books” and declared Simms to be “immeasurably the greatest writer of fiction in America.”

Paul Hamilton Hayne graduated from the College of Charleston (1850), studied law under James Louis Petigru, and was admitted to the bar, but found the legal profession disagreeable. Already in 1845 Hayne had published poems in the Charleston Courier under the pseudonym “Alphaeus,” and in 1848 he contributed to the Southern Literary Messenger. He became the manager of the short-lived Southern Literary Gazette, a weekly, and wrote for several journals including Graham’s Magazine. Hayne lived by selling his poems or essays, mainly to northern journals, such as Appleton’s Journal and Lippincott’s Magazine. He was an eclectic critic who judged by personal taste rather than aesthetic standard. Hayne rejected Walt Whitman’s free verse and ideas but recognized the genius of Edgar Allen Poe at an early date. He edited The Poems of Henry Timrod (1873) and added “A Memoir”; in youth they were classmates at Christopher Cotes’s school in Charleston and had remained friends.

Henry Timrod was born on December 8, 1828, in Charleston, South Carolina. He studied at the University of Georgia beginning in 1847 but was soon forced by illness to end his formal studies and returned to Charleston. He took a position with a lawyer and planned to begin a law practice. From 1848 to 1853, he submitted a number of poems to the Southern Literary Messenger under the pen name Aglaus. He left his legal studies by December 1850, calling it “distasteful”, and focused more on writing and tutoring.

Timrod was a member of Charleston’s literati. Timrod’s friend and fellow poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne, posthumously edited and published The Poems of Henry Timrod, with more of Timrod’s more famous poems in 1873, including his “Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867”.

Modern reviews of Timrod’s writings have asserted that Timrod was one of the most important regional poets of nineteenth-century America and one of the most important Southern poets. In terms of achievement, Timrod is often compared to Sidney Lanier and John Greenleaf Whittier as poets who achieved significant stature by combining lyricism with a poetic capacity for nationalism. All three poets also explored the heroic ode as a poetic form. In 1901, a monument with a bronze bust of Timrod was dedicated in Charleston. The state’s General Assembly passed a resolution in 1911 instituting the verses of his poem “Carolina” as the lyrics of the official state anthem. In September 2006, an article for The New York Times noted similarities between Bob Dylan’s lyrics in the album, Modern Times and the poetry of Timrod. A wider debate developed in The Times as to the nature of “borrowing” within the folk tradition and in literature.

Padgett Powell  is an American novelist in the Southern literary tradition. His debut novel, Edisto, was nominated for the American Book Award.

Powell has written five more novels—including A Woman Named Drown (1987), Edisto Revisited (1996), a sequel to his debut, Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men (2000), The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? (2009), and You & Me (2012), his most recent—and three collections of short stories. In addition to The New Yorker, Powell’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, Grand Street, Oxford American, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

James Kibler’s, Our Father’s Fields, renders a history of a plantation and its family as it grew from 204 to 2,035 acres to become one of the most valuable and productive estates in the Upcountry of South Carolina. Although Kibler had previously written or edited 11 other significant books and scores of scholarly essays, reviews, and journal articles, Our Fathers’ Fields catapulted him to a greater level of notoriety. With its publication scholars across the South and nation lined up to offer endorsements for his work. Our Father’s Fields received the Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Non Fiction in 1999.

Former Student of Seabrook at Fettes College in Edinburgh writes after Seabrook’s death: “I was taught by Seabrook at Fettes in Edinburgh from 1980 to 1982 and he had a massive impact on me…It makes me very happy to think that other people also appreciated this lovely and gifted man…I feel so sad.”

Charles Pinckney Seabrook Wilkinson scholarly career was distinguished. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, in Fine Arts, 1971, and from Oxford University with a master of Arts, First Class, in Theology, 1973. From there he took a position in the English Department of Fettes College in Edinburgh. He had an outstanding reputation as an inspiring teacher and is credited with sending more of his students on to Oxford and Cambridge than any teacher at Fettes before him.

In 1992 he returned to his native South Carolina to do advanced graduate work in literature at the University of South Carolina. He taught briefly at the College of Charleston, but turned increasingly to writing, publishing reviews and essays for The Charleston Mercury and working on his volume of poetry, “A Local Habitation,” which was published in Charleston, followed by “A Resident Alien: Key West Poems” for which he received a grant from the Florida Keys Council of the Arts to publish in Key West.

The poet and scholar Seabrook Wilkinson died on September 30, 2015, after a long illness characterized by circulatory problems.

Anne Sinkler Whaley Le Clercq was born and raised in Charleston and graduated from Ashley Hall before attending Sweet Briar College. She received degrees from Duke University, Emory University and the University of Tennessee College of Law.

At the University of Tennessee, Le Clercq worked as the head of user education and assistant to the dean of libraries before taking over as the director of the Daniel Library at The Citadel in 1996.

Le Clercq also published a number of articles and books based on her family’s Lowcountry roots, including “A Grand Tour of Gardens” and “An Antebellum Lowcountry Household.”

Louis Rubin was born November 19, 1923 in Charleston, South Carolina. He studied for two years at the College of Charleston before he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war he received a B.A. from the University of Richmond in 1946, and an M.A.and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University . Rubin was the founder and president of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. He was the author or editor of more than 50 books of literary criticism, fiction, and, notably, The History of Southern Literature.

Literary Charleston and the Lowcountry edited by Curtis Worthington with forward by Louis Rubin. Worthington is the author of critical writing and literary history and a former member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. He is the recipient of the Skylark Prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and he has performed widely in plays and operas. He is a practicing neurosurgeon in Charleston. In Literary Charleston and the Lowcountry, Curtis Worthington compiles this intriguing and surprising collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry selections by thirty-four local and internationally acclaimed authors. It provides a rich tapestry of one of the most popular tourist destinations worldwide. The stories of this often mysterious and much-loved colonial city are revealed through the eyes of writers who lived there or visited over the centuries. From the winding back alleys and ringing church bells of the historic district, to the expansive former plantations of the Lowcountry, to the seductive dune and white sands of nearby beaches, Literary Charleston and the Lowcountry presents a picture of Charleston never fully explored or appreciated.

Forward by Louis Rubin. He is the author over forty books. His awards and honors include Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, the Oliver Max Gardner Award, the Mayflower Award, the Distinguished Virginian Award, and honorary degrees

Damon Lamar Fordham is the author of “True Stories of Black South Carolina” and “Voices of Black South Carolina.” He is received his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina and his graduate degree in history from the College of Charleston. He appears weekly telling Black history stories and commentary on Osei Chandler’s “Roots Music” show on South Carolina public radio. He also appears in the South Carolina ETV documentaries “Where Do We Go From Here” (2000) “All The Children of All The People” (2001) and on BBC Radio 4’s “The Real Amos & Andy” (2003).

Barbara L. Bellows, is a Charleston, South Carolina native and former professor of history at Middlebury College. She is the author of Benevolence among Slaveholders: Caring for the Poor in Charleston, 1760–1860, A Talent for Living: Josephine Pinckney and the Charleston Literary Tradition, and Two Charlestonians at War.

Dr. David S. Shields is the Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina and the chairman of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, an organization created in South Carolina to rebuild local culinary heritage and named after the Carolina Gold rice grain. He has published 13 books in three fields: early American literary culture, American performing arts, photography and food studies.

Bret Lott is the author of fourteen books. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching. He serves as Nonfiction Editor of Crazyhorse, has spoken on Flannery O’Connor at the White House, and served as Fulbright Senior American Scholar to Bar-llan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. From 2006 to 2013 he served as a member of the National Council on the Arts. He is also director of the Spoleto Summer Study Abroad program in English at the College.

Franklin Burroughs was born, raised, and received his elementary and high school education in Conway, South Carolina. A graduate of the University of the South, Franklin Burroughs took the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard and served as Professor of English at Bowdoin College from 1968 until his retirement in 2002.

In The River Home Franklin Burroughs chronicles a canoe voyage through the Carolinas, visiting his ancestral homeland and the people who inhabit the banks of the Waccamaw River. His account of this distinctive and rapidly disintegrating backwater reflects on life on and off the river, topography, and how this landscape echoes in the speech, memories, and circumstances of the people he encounters. Their lives provide a kind of living archaeology, and Burroughs’s careful descriptions of their voices and habits open a door into history. As quiet and powerful as a river itself, this is a wise and beautifully written narrative of nature, people, and place by one of America’s finest writers.

Charleston writer Richard Cote’s historical account of Charleston’s earthquake in 1886, City of Heroes, and biographies: Mary’s World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-century Charleston (1999); Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy (2002) and The Redneck Riviera brought him international recognition.

The Poetry Society of South Carolina

Founders of the Poetry Society of South Carolina: Josephine Pinckney, top right, John Bennett, above left, Hervey Allen, above center, and Dubose Heyward, above right.

Autobiographical snippet from the dust cover of Three O’clock Dinner:

Josephine Pinckney may be described as a cosmopolitan Charlestonian. She has traveled widely abroad, spent a year in Italy, lived winters in New York and summers in Mexico, but she always goes back to home and garden in Charleston, just as her family, well known in the south, has for generations. A literary lady, she has previously published a book of poems, “Sea Drinking Cities” and a novel, Hilton Head. With DuBose Heyward, Hervey Allen and others, she started the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which has had a strong influence on the rebirth of literature in the South. As a hobby, Miss Pinckney collects and transcribes spirituals which she sings with a group called the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals. Gardening and dogs have a strong appeal for her, and she collects old china and first editions.

Josephine Pinckney was born in Charleston, South Carolina on January 25, 1895 to Thomas Pinkney and Camilla Scott. She attended Ashley Hall and established a literary magazine there, graduating in 1912. She then attended college at the College of Charleston, Radcliffe College, and Columbia University. She received the Southern Authors Award in 1946. She died October 4, 1957, and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery.

John Bennett was born in Ohio in 1865, married Susan Scythe and moved to Charleston in 1902. He was the author of children’s books including Master Skylark and Barnaby Lee, and Newberry Award Honoree The Pigtail of Ah Lee Ben Loo. Bennett also wrote local folk tales (including Doctor to the Dead and Madame Margot). Bennett cofounded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and was an early influence on and advisor to DuBose Heyward.

Hervey Allen is best known for his work Anthony Adverse. Allen also wrote Israfel (1926), a biography of American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

For a period of time, Allen taught at the Porter Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. He also taught English at Charleston High School which at that time, although public, was only for boys.

Walter B. Edgar is an American historian and author specializing in Southern history and culture, particularly for South Carolina. Edgar has authored or edited several books about the state, including South Carolina: A History and The South Carolina Encyclopedia.  He is known for hosting the popular weekly radio show Walter Edgar’s Journal on South Carolina Public Radio on historic and cultural topics, as well as the daily feature South Carolina A to Z on South Carolina Public Radio.

Marion Rivers Cato, a graduate of Ashley Hall and Converse College, is a talented author and dedicated community volunteer. In addition to publishing two books: Marie Ravenel: From Childhood to China-an account of a medical missionary in revolutionary China in the 1920s; and, The Story of L. Mendel Rivers-a biography  of her  father, Marion has served as a member of the  board of trustees of the Historic Charleston Foundation, Converse College, and South Carolina Educational Television, and served on the board of directors of the Gibbes Museum of Art. She is a member of the Colonial Dames of South Carolina and a former member of the Junior League.

When Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden came out in spring 1997, it took the gardening world by storm. In her next book, Mrs. Whaley Entertains she says”:

“If the hostess is all a-flutter like a butterfly caught in a net–then, as the Irish say, ‘I wish I was to home and the party was to hell.'” Don’t serve guests’ dishes “you haven’t made successfully two or three times–and quite lately.” And after supper, “Leave the dishes on the table, blow out the candles, shut the door and serve finger desserts and coffee in another room . . . do not let your guests help you clean up!”

In addition to advice, Mrs. Whaley opened her personal scrapbook of receipts and selected one hundred of her favorites, including regional delectables like “Edisto Shrimp Pie,” great dinner dishes like “Louisa Hagood’s Ginger Chicken” and “Miss Em’s Pork Tenderloin,” old-fashioned breakfast breads like “Nan’s Little Thin Corn Cakes,” and true discoveries like “Dancing School Fudge.” Just as he did in their first acclaimed, best-selling collaboration, her author-editor-novelist, William Baldwin perfectly captures the octogenarian.

William P. Baldwin III has 23 books his most popular book is Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden. His first novel, The Hard to Catch Mercy, won the Lillian Smith Award. His award–winning poetry collections, The Unpainted South and These Our Offerings, are among Baldwin’s many contributions to Southern literature. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Southern Living, Veranda, Southern Accents, Charleston and Garden & Gun. 

Barbara Hagerty is a poet, writer, photographer and visual essayist who was born in Charleston, SC. She lives with her husband and children in South Carolina, where she divides her time between Charleston and Edisto Island.

Linda Annas Ferguson is the author of five collections of poetry. She was a featured poet for the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series. She served on the Board of Governors for the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Steering Committee for the Visiting Writers’ Series for Lenoir Rhyne University and was Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art.  She was a Poetry Fellow for the  South Carolina Arts Commission and the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She presented at the South Carolina Book Festival and the Piccolo Festival Sundown Poetry Series in Charleston, SC. Her literary work is archived by Furman University Special Collections in the James B. Duke Library. Her books include: Dirt Sandwich (Press 53, 2009), Bird Missing from One Shoulder (WordTech Editions, 2007), Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk (Finishing Line Press, 2006), Last Chance to Be Lost (Kentucky Writers Coalition Press, 2004), It’s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing (Palanquin Press, 2002)

Dennis Stiles graduated from U.S. Air Force Academy and served for 30 years, is a widely published poet, and a history tour guide for French and English tourists in Charleston, South Carolina.

Charleston, SC native, Eugene Platt has given over 100 public readings of his work across the nation. After graduating from St. Andrew’s Parish High School, Eugene served three years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and chaplain’s assistant. He earned a B.A. at the University of South Carolina and did graduate study at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. St. Andrew’s Parish is a coming-of-age story about Andy Bell and Bubba Bailey, two best friends growing up in 1940s and ’50s Charleston.

Mary Alice Monroe is a best-selling author known for fiction that explore the compelling parallels between nature and human nature. Many of her novels deal with environmental issues. For example, The Beach House and Swimming Lessons refer to the plight of injured sea turtles. 

Born in Illinois, Monroe currently resides in South Carolina, and many of her novels are set in the southern United States and feature “strong Southern women”. Her novel Time Is a River is about breast cancer survivors in a fly-fishing group in North Carolina, and Last Light Over Carolina describes the life and times of the shrimping industry.

Monroe has received numerous awards, including the 2008 Award for Writing from the South Carolina Center for the Book, 2014 South Carolina Award for Literary Excellence, 2015 SW Florida Author of Distinction Award, the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Book Award for Green Fiction. Mary Alice Monroe is a 2018 inductee to the South Carolina Academy of Authors.