Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series
The Piccolo Sundown Poetry Series was started in 1997 by local journalist and critic Carol Furtwangler. Almost single-handedly, she presented local and nationally-known poets for free during the annual Spoleto Festival until 2012. Charleston’s poetry community and Spoleto patrons are grateful for her service to Lowcountry culture.
photo: author
The Dock Street Theater, est. 1809
photo: author
The courtyard hosted the Sundown Poetry Festival for over twenty years.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2025
Washington Square Park
Coordinators: Ed Gold, Yvette R. Murray, and Katherine Williams
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Miho Kinnas and Richard Garcia
Miho Kinnas is a Japanese writer, translator and poet. Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias is her third poetry collection and includes a poem anthologized in Best American Poetry 2023. Her recent book reviews are published in World Literature Today and American Book Review. She lives on Hilton Head Island.
Richard Garcia was already a poet in his teens, and his early chapbook earned an encouraging letter from Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz that convinced him to take it seriously. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, and an NEA fellowship. His third BOA book, The Chair, was called “the best book of 2015” by the editor of Poetry. He considers teaching a separate art form, and runs The Long Table in Charleston.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Glenis Redmond
Glenis Redmond (M.F.A., Warren Wilson College) has published seven books of poetry. Her work most recently appears in Orion Magazine, Callaloo, The NY Times and NC Literary Review.. Greenville, SC’s inaugural poet laureate, received the highest arts award in SC, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the SC Academy of Authors in 2022. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Claire Bateman
Claire Bateman is the author of The Pillow Museum (Fiction Collective 2) and nine other collections, most recently, Wonders of the Invisible World (42 Miles) and Scape (New Issues). She has been awarded fellowships by the NEA and the Tennessee Arts Commission as well as two Pushcart Prizes.
Friday, May 30, 2025
Daniel Cross Turner
Daniel Cross Turner (Ph.D., Vanderbilt) has published five books: Riding Light (poetry); Southern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South (monograph); Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (anthology); Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature (essay collection); and Coast Lines (anthology exploring SC coast). His writing appears in Five Points, Literary Matters, and Hub City, etc.
Monday, June 2, 2025
Kendra Hamilton
Charleston native Kendra Hamilton, an associate professor of English at Presbyterian College, published a new nonfiction book in June 2024 titled Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess. She is a Cave Canem fellow whose recent art reflects her research into the lives of enslaved Americans, and whose poetry appears in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Len Lawson
Dr. Len Lawson is author of Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane and Chime. He is also editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry. He is Assistant Professor of English and Director of African American Studies at Newberry College.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Maria Martin and Joe Zealberg
Maria Martin’s poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is a participant in Richard Garcia’s poetry workshop. From 2017-2021 she served on the board of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.
Joe Zealberg lives in Mt. Pleasant, SC and is a member of Richard Garcia’s Long Table Poets. His book of poems, Covalence, was published in 2015 by The Word Works. He is a retired psychiatrist.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Melissa St. Clair
Melissa Whiteford St. Clair is a poet and social justice advocate. She is the author of two books of poetry, Home Work: A Collection of Poems Sparked by One White Woman’s Journey on the Matter of Race, and Heart Work: A Heart-Centered Collection of Poems. Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies. Her poem “Harriet’s Feat to Freedom” was included on the Hilton Head Island Poetry Trail at Mitchelville.
Friday, June 6, 2025
Rich Ferguson
L.A. poet/spoken-word performer Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, among other poets and musicians. He has authored a novel, New Jersey Me (Rare Bird Books), and two poetry collections, 8th & Agony (Punk Hostage Press), and Everything is Radiant Between the Hates (Moon Tide Press). He was the 2023-24 National Beat Poetry Foundation”s U.S. Beat Poet Laureate.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2024
Washington Square Park
Coordinators: Ed Gold, Yvette R. Murray, and Katherine Williams
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Danielle DeTiberus
Danielle DeTiberus lives in Charleston, SC, where she teaches creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in Academy of American Poets, Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, River Styx, Spoon River Poetry Review, Waxwing and elsewhere. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, and The Missouri Review’s Ascendant: Seven Promising Poets.
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Jessye Hilton
Jessica K. Hylton holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and works at Coastal Carolina University. Her books include Gag Order, The Great Scissor Hunt, and the forthcoming collection Scatter; or, James Joyce Always Makes Me Think of Boobs. She is the program director for the Poetry Society of South Carolina and runs the Funky Fish Camp Reading Series at Between the Antlers in Georgetown.
JoeyTucker
Thursday, May 30, 2024
Joey Tucker, of Walterboro, SC, first encountered poetry in his senior year at Presbyterian College, in Clinton, SC, and that is when the light came on. In 2009, he released his first chapbook, Walletz & Pursez, then two more, L.I.G.H.T. and A Poet’s Playground followed, plus two poetry CDs, Worth My Weight in Watts (2015) and Summer Soulstice (2017). He has performed at several venues in SC & GA, and teaches high school English.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
Friday, May 31, 2024
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet, author, and curator. Her verse memoir, Mama Phife Represents, is a tribute to her late son, hip hop icon Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. She has authored five poetry collections, Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body, Arrival (a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Award), and We Are Not Wearing Helmets (2022, Northwestern University).
Lola Haskins
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
NEA fellow Lola Haskins’s 17 books include poetry collections, a poetry advice book, an exploration of fifteen Florida cemeteries, and prose-poem fables illustrated by Maggie Taylor. Her poems appear in The Atlantic, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Prairie Schooner, The London Review of Books, Georgia Review, Southern Review and more. She taught computer science at the Univ of Florida for 28 years. Then from 2004 until 2015 she was on the faculty of the Rainier Writer’s Workshop.
Ray McManus
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Ray McManus holds an MFA and a PhD from Univ of SC and is associate professor of English at USC Sumter. His first book, USC Press’s Driving through the country before you are born, won the 2006 SC First Book Prize in Poetry and the SC Poetry Prize, selected by Kate Daniels. His second book, Red Dirt Jesus, was selected for the Marick Press Poetry Prize in 2011. His third collection, Punch. won a 2015 Independent Publishers Book award. McManus’s work is in Crazyhorse, Nimrod, Los Angeles Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Yemassee, Waccamaw, Jasper, and elsewhere.
Regina Y.C. Garcia
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Regina YC Garcia is a poet and English professor from Greenville, NC. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill (BA) and East Carolina Univ (MAEd) , her work has appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, The Book of Black, and numerous other journals and anthologies. Her work is featured in a Mid-South Emmy Award-winning episode of PBS Muse featuring The Black Light Project (UNC TV), and the Sacred Nine Project of Tulane University. The Firetalker’s Daughter (Finishing Line) is her debut collection.
Katherine Williams
Friday, June 7, 2024
Katherine Williams is a Pushcart and Best of the Web nominee with poems in Spillway, South Carolina Review, Projector, Measure, and elsewhere. She has published three chap books and read at venues from the L.A. Poetry Festival to the College of Charleston. A retired biomedical research technician, she is a longtime board member of The Poetry Society of SC, founding director of Poetry at McLeod, and retired founding chair of James Island Arts. Her first collection, The Devil Cruises Pacific Coast Highway, was released last year by Kelsay.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2023,
Washington Square Park.
Coordinators:Ed Gold, Yvette R. Murray, and Katherine Williams
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Willie Lee Kinard III
Designer, musician, and Pushcart-nominated poet Willie Lee Kinard III (he/they) earned a BFA from USC and an MFA from the Univ of Pittsburgh. His publications include Orders of Service (Alice James Award, 2022), and a self-published chapbook / mixtape, chroma. (2016); and work in Obsidian, Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, Boston Review, The Rumpus, and other journals. He has won fellowships from the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, The Watering Hole, and the Pittsburgh Foundation. Kinard is from Newberry, South Carolina, and currently teaches at USC.
Marlanda Dekine
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Marlanda Dekine, of Plantersville, SC, holds an MFA from Converse, and is author of Thresh & Hold (Hub City 2022) and i am from a punch & a kiss,(unnamed LLC, 2017). Her work appears in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets (2024), What Things Cost: an anthology for the people (2023), and Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World (Penn State 2019). She has received fellowships from the SC Arts Commission, SC Humanities, Tin House, Hub City Press, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and The Watering Hole.
Eugene Platt
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Charleston native Eugene Platt holds a B.A. from USC and a Diploma in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His poems have appeared in many publications. He has given over 100 public readings of his work and was invited to read in the inaugural Dublin Arts Festival in 1970. He has served as first poet laureate of the Town of James Island, poet-in-residence for WSCI Radio, a James Island Public Service District commissioner 1993-2020, and Green Party nominee for US Congress. He lives in Charleston with his Montreal-born wife Judith, corgi Bess, and cats Finnegan and Maeve.
Angelo Geter
Friday, June 2, 2023
Angelo “Eyeambic” Geter merges his passions for poetry and speaking into a unique performance that educates, entertains and inspires. Angelo’s work touches on a variety of issues including social justice, race, grief, character and manhood. The 2018 National Poetry Slam champion blends commentary, stories and personal narratives to transcend performance. His work has appeared on All Def Poetry, Charleston Currents, and The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. Geter is poet laureate of Rock Hill, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate fellow.
John Milkereit
Wednesday, June 6, 2023
John Milkereit works in Houston as a mechanical engineer and holds an MFA in poetry from Rainier Writing Workshop. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Home & Away and Paying Admissions, from Pudding House. His collections are A Rotating Equipment is Never Finished, (Ink Brush, 2015), Drive the World in a Taxicab (2018) and A Place Comfortable with Fire (both Lamar), and Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover (Kelsay 2023).
Kurtis Lamkin
Friday, June 4, 2021
Kurtis Lamkin is a poet from Philadelphia who plays the Kora, a 21-string West African gourd instrument he makes himself. For almost fifty years, he has performed across the United States from Harlem to Carbondale to Maui at festivals, theaters, prisons, schools and community centers. He has several recordings, the latest of which is Country, a song about personal social activism. Lamkin served as the Bourne Poetry Chair at Georgia Tech, and as poet-in-residence at The New School for Social Research. He has a son, a daughter, and a grandson. He lives in Charleston, SC.
Elizabeth Robin
Thursday, June 7, 2023
Elizabeth Robin retired to Hilton Head Island after 33 years teaching high school to devote herself to writing. She has two chapbooks, Where Green Meets Blue (2018), and Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017), and a collection, To My Dreamcatcher (2022), all from Finishing Line. In 2021 she won the Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship from the SC Writers Association and the John Edward Johnson Prize from the Poetry Society of SC. Robin emcees a monthly open mic and partners with arts groups to bring literary programs to Hilton Head Island.
The Long Table Poets
Friday, June 8, 2023
The Long Table Poets have studied since 2004 in Charleston with award-winning poet Richard Garcia, whose seventh book, Porridge, was called “the best book of 2015” by the editor of Poetry. Among them the Long Table Poets have earned four MFAs, and published five collections, six chapbooks, and countless poems.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2022,
Washington Square Park.
Coordinators:Ed Gold, Yvette R. Murray, and Katherine Williams
Laurel Blossom
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Laurel Blossom is author of Longevity, (2015) and Degrees of Latitude (2007), both from Four Way, Wednesday: New and Selected Poems, (Ridgeway, 2004) and The Papers Said, (Greenhouse Review, 1993) Her most recent release is a chapbook, Un-, (2020, Finishing Line). She was the 2015 Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina. Her work appears in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, (Billy Collins, ed.), Poetry, Pequod, The Paris Review, Pleiades, Seneca Review, Harper’s, and elsewhere. She now lives in Los Angeles.
Ed Gold
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Baltimorean Ed Gold, MA, Johns Hopkins Univ Writing Seminars, has two chapbooks, Sundown (2023, Finishing Line) and Owl (SCOP Press), and poems in Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Passager, Think, New York Quarterly, Kakalak, Window Cat Press, Kansas Quarterly, Poet Lore, Rat’s Ass Review, Homonym Journal, and many others. For 15 years he taught at Univ of MD, writing poems intensely until becoming a technical writer for corporations and agencies. In Charleston he was adopted by The Long Table, and is again a thriving poet.
Lisa Hase-Jackson
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Lisa Hase-Jackson is author of Flint & Fire (The Word Works, 2019), winner of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize, and Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press), which won the Converse MFA Alumni Prize for Poetry. Born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Midwest and Southwest, Lisa lived and taught in Seoul, Albuquerque, and Kansas City before coming to Charleston. Her award-winning poetry has appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Voices, The South Carolina Review, and others.
Gary Jackson
March 17-18, 2018
Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collection Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He was featured on 2013’s "New American Poets" by the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, and Crab Orchard Review, and is a fellow of both Cave Canem and Bread Loaf. He joined the Department of English at the College of Charleston in 2013.
Chrys Tobey
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Chrys Tobey (she/her) is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in The Sun, Ploughshares, Rattle, New Ohio Review, The Minnesota Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, and featured in Verse Daily. Her first book of poetry, A Woman is a Woman is a Woman is a Woman, was published in 2017 by Steel Toe Books. Chrys lives in Portland, Oregon, with her rockstar lady-love, stepcats, and dog of ten years.
Richard Garcia
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
San Francisco native Richard Garcia (MFA, Warren Wilson) started writing in his teens. His awards include an NEA fellowship, the Ploughshares Cohen Award, and a Pushcart. His first book, Selected Poems (Quinto Sol) earned praise from Octavio Paz; Chickenhead (Foothills 2009), accolades from Peter Johnson; and Don Share called Porridge (Press53) “the best book of 2015.” Garcia wrote a successful bilingual children’s book and from 1991-2002 was poet-in-residence at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He taught creative writing at College of Charleston and Antioch Los Angeles.
Yvette R Murray
Tuesday, June 5, 2022
Pushcart nominee and Watering Hole fellow Yvette R. Murray’ chapbook, Hush, Puppy is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She earned a BA in English from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been published in Emrys Journal, The Petigru Review, Catfish Stew, A Gathering Together, Call and Response Journal, Best New Poets and elsewhere. Ms Murray lives in Charleston, her hometown, and besides poetry is writing a science fiction short stories and a children’s book series. She serves on the board of The Poetry Society of SC and the SC Writers Association.
Lawrence Rhu
Friday, June 10, 2022
Lawrence Rhu is Todd Professor of the Italian Renaissance, Emeritus at University of South Carolina, Columbia. He has published essays and books on the American and European Renaissances, among them Stanley Cavell’s American Dream: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Hollywood Movies. He received the 2018 Poetry Award from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and was runner-up for that Society’s 2019 Marble Faun Award. His collection Pre-owned Odyssey and Rented Rooms is forthcoming from Main Street Rag.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2021,
Lenhardt Garden at Gibbes Museum of Art
Coordinators:Curtis Derrick, Ed Gold, and Katherine Williams
Al Black
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
After moving in 2008 from Indianapolis, Al Black started Mind Gravy, Columbia's first poetry/music open mic. He has two poetry collections, I Only Left For Tea (2014) and Man With Two Shadows (2018), with Len Lawson co-edited Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (2017), and is published in anthologies, journals and periodicals. He was Jasper Magazine’s Literary Artist of the Year 2017.
Valerie Nieman
Wednesday, June 2, 2021
NEA and NC Arts Council fellow Valerie Nieman’s latest book, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, joins two earlier collections from Press 53: Wake Wake Wake and Hotel Worthy. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she teaches writing at North Carolina A&T State University and at other venues including John C. Campbell Folk School.
Randy Spencer
Thursday, June 3, 2021
Randy Spencer, physician, artist, and poet, grew up on coastal VA's James River. For the last 40+ years he has lived in central SC, mostly on Lake Murray. His latest chapbook, The Color After Green (2019, Finishing Line), concerns his connections to the SE coast and Lake Murray. Randy holds an MFA from USC, and his books include The Failure of Magic and What the Body Knows.
Kurtis Lamkin
Friday, June 4, 2021
Kurtis Lamkin is a poet from Philadelphia who plays the Kora, a West African gourd instrument he makes himself, and for almost fifty years has performed across the US. He served as the Bourne Poetry Chair at GA Tech and as poet-in-residence at The New School for Social Research. He has a son, a daughter, and a grandson. His latest recording, Country, about his social activism.
Lola Haskins
Monday, June 7, 2021
NEA fellow Lola Haskins’s 17 books include poetry, poetry advice, an exploration of FL cemeteries, and prose poems illustrated by Maggie Taylor. Her poems appear in The Atlantic, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She taught computer science at UF for 28 years, and from 2004 until 2015 she was on the faculty of the Rainier Writer’s Workshop.
David Axelrod
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Dr. David B. Axelrod, Volusia County poet laureate and director of the Creative Happiness Institute, teaches the healing art of writing. He holds an MFA from Iowa Writers Workshops, an MA from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and one of his three Fulbrights was as US poet-in-residence in the People’s Republic of China. He is an elder of a Daoist church and an honorary Wudang priest.
Kwoya Fagin Maples
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Charlestonian Kwoya Fagin Maples holds an MFA from U Alabama and is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow. She is author of Mend (UKY, 2018) and a chapbook, Something of Yours (Finishing Line 2010). Her work appears in Blackbird, Obsidian, Berkeley Poetry Review, The African-American Review, Cave Canem Anthology XIII, and elsewhere. Maples teaches creative writing at the AL School of Fine Arts and directs a 3-D exhibit of poetry and visual art.
Grace Ocasio
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Pushcart Prize nominee Grace C. Ocasio’s second collection, Family Reunion (Broadstone), received honorable mention for the Quercus Review Press Book Award. Her other books include The Speed of Our Lives, (BlazeVOX, 2014) and a chapbook, Hollerin from This Shack (Ahadada, 2009). She was a finalist for an Aesthetica Creative Writing Award in Poetry and won a NC Arts Council grant. Her poems appear in Rattle, Court Green, Black Renaissance Noire, and other journals.
Friday, June 11, 2021
Ren Ruggiero
Ren Ruggiero earned her B.A. in Writing from New College of California. She enjoys singing, kayaking, hiking, reading Tarot cards, and hanging out with her cat and Chihuahua. Currently living in Charleston, South Carolina, she is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) who specializes in patient care and counseling. Her poetry explores family dynamics, American culture, and queerness, grounded in imagery of the natural world.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2020
postponed due to covid-19 pandemicPiccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2019
Dock Street Theater Courtyard
Coordinators:Curtis Derrick, Ed Gold, and Katherine Williams
Monday, May 27, 2019
Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson, daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, a founding member of Cave Canem and finalist for several National Book Awards, has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2013 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Nelson has composed extensively on the lives of African Americans, including Emmett Till, George Washington Carver, and a slave named Fortune.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Cecilia Woloch
Cecilia Woloch is author of six collections of poems and a novel; an NEA Fellow and Fulbright Scholar; and her other awards include a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Best American Poetry. Her second book, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, is the basis for multi-lingual, multi-media performances across the U.S. and Europe and was published in French in 2014 by Scribe-l’Harmattan. She has traveled the world as a teacher and writer and teaches creative writing at Georgia College & State University.
Dusty WoodruffDusty Woodruff is a classical guitarist who studied at the University of Georgia under John Sutherland, renowned pedagogue and protégé of Andrés Segovia. He has performed, as part of The Athens Guitar Duo, throughout the United States and Europe, and in cities in the People’s Republic of China and in Russia. Woodruff is also active as a soloist and concerto performer and has conducted master-classes across the world. He heads the Guitar Department at Georgia College & State University.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Debbie Scott presents a tribute to Susan Meyers
Friends of Susan Meyers will read her posthumous release, Self-Portrait in the River of Déjà Vu (Press53). Her previous volume, My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass, won the Cider Press Review Editors Prize and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the Robert Dana Anhinga Poetry Prize. She was the 2013 SC Academy of Authors’ Carrie McCray Nickens fellow. Her poems appear in Prairie Schooner, NC Literary Review, Poemeleon, and Rabbit.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Dustin Pearson
Dustin Pearson is author of A Family Is a House (C&R Press, 2019) and Millenial Roost (C&R Press, 2018). He is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at FL State University and holds an MFA from AZ State University. He has served as editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and director of the Clemson Literary Festival. His work appears in Blackbird, Vinyl Poetry, Bennington Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere.
Len Lawson
Friday, May 31, 2019
Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His poetry appears in Callaloo Journal, African American Review, Verse Daily, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Len is a Ph.D. student in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Thelma “Teddy” Norris
Monday, June 3, 2019
Teddy Norris was Professor of English at St. Charles Community College and editor of Mid Rivers Review and served as a regional judge for Poetry Out Loud. Her poems appear in Lindenwood Review, Soundings Review, Country Dog Review, Little Patuxent Review, Broad River Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Pillars of Salt, was released in 2015 by Finishing Line Press.
Judith Pacht
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Judith Pacht, of Los Angeles, debuts her second collection, Infirmary for a Private Soul (Tebot Bach), and a new chapbook, A Cumulus Fiction (Finishing Line Press). A two-time Pushcart nominee, her work includes poems published in Ploughshares, Runes, Phoebe, Cider Press Review, and Foreign Literature (Moscow, Russia).
Elizabeth Bernardin
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Libby Bernardin’s first full collection is Stones Ripe for Sowing (Press 53, 2018). She has two chapbooks, The Book of Myth (SC Poetry Initiative, 2009) and Layers of Song (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals. In 2015, she won the SC Poetry Society Forum Prize. Her poem, “Transmigration,” winner of the NC Poetry of Witness Award and published in Pinesong, was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize.
Timothy Conroy
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Tim Conroy is a poet and former educator. His work has been published in journals, magazines, and compilations, including Fall Lines, Jasper, and Marked by Water. In 2017, Muddy Ford Press published his first book of poetry, Theologies of Terrain, edited by Ed Madden, poet laureate of Columbia. A founding board member of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, established in his brother’’s honor, Tim Conroy lives in Columbia.
Fred Dings
Friday, June 7, 2019
Fred Dings’s books of poetry include Eulogy for a Private Man (TriQuarterly Books), After the Solstice (Orchises Press), and two chapbooks, Vespers and The Bruised Sky. His poems appear in The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Dings teaches in the MFA program at the University of South Carolina.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2018, City Gallery at Waterfront Park.
Coordinators:Curtis Derrick, Ed Gold, and Katherine Williams
Susan Laughter Meyers Tribute
Tuesday, June 3, 2018
Tireless poetry advocate Susan Laughter Meyers died suddenly last June. Susan was known throughout both Carolinas for reading, writing, teaching, organizing groups to attend poetry events, and serving poetry non-profits. She was a longtime PSSC officer, and a co-coordinator of Litchfield Tea and Poetry and the Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series. In this reading, Debbie Scott and friends will give a retrospective of her work.
Kate Daniels
Wednesday, June 4, 2018
Nationally known poet Kate Daniels, professor and Director of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University, is the author of several poetry collections, the latest, A Walk in Victoria’s Secret. Among her many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship and Pushcart Prize. She will offer a reading of her poems, including her work in the new anthology Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016).
Horace Mungin
Thursday, June 5, 2018
Horace Mungin, of Hollywood, SC, was raised in NYC, where he lived some 50 years except to serve in the 82nd Airborne. He majored in English at Fordham U, and after publishing in the New York Times and elsewhere, co-founded Black Forum Magazine, wrote a syndicated weekly column compiled into the Sleepy Willie series including two of ten books he’s authored.
Rich Ferguson
Friday, June 6, 2018
Charlotte native Rich Ferguson, of Los Angeles, is a Pushcart-nomiated poet and novelist. He has shared the stage with luminaries like Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, and Moby, and is a featured performer in One Giant Leap: What About Me?. His poetry performance videos, like atomic storms swirling around a nucleus of love and hate, are widely anthologized.
Ann Herlong-Bodman
Tuesday, June 10, 2018
A widely published poet, SC Academy of Authors fellow Ann Herlong-Bodman has authored a travel book and a historical novel. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, and The SC Review. In her first collection, Loose in Far-away Places (Press 53), her work seeks the beauty in ugly truths, unknowable languages and impossible histories encountered in her travels.
Gary Jackson
Wednesday, June 11, 2018
Born and raised in Topeka, Gary Jackson is a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellow, and author of Missing You, Metropolis (2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize). He was featured on New American Poets (Poetry Society of America 2013), and his work appears in Callaloo, Tin House, and Crab Orchard Review, He joined the Department of English at the College of Charleston in 2013.
Ellen Rachlin
Thursday, June 12, 2018
Ellen Rachlin (MFA, Antioch) has published in American Poetry Review, Granta, Court Green, and anthologies. Her collections are Until Crazy Catches Me (2008) and Permeable Divide (2018 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award), both from Antrim House, and At the Big Bang Resort, forthcoming from Red Hen.
Susan Ludwigson
Friday, June 8, 2018
Susan Ludvigson, professor emerita at Winthrop, has published ten collections, most recently Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems (2000), and Escaping the House of Certainty (2006). She was a Fulbright Fellow in Yugoslavia and won awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, and Guggenheim Foundation.
Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry 2017
Dock Street Theater Courtyard
Coordinators:Ed Gold, Barbara B.H. Hagerty, and Katherine Williams
Alan Michael Parker
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Alan Michael Parker is the author of The Age of Discovery (2020) and The Ladder (2016), both from Tupelo, and other titles. A recipient of prizes and residencies from the Pushcart Press, MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo, his work has twice been included in Best American Poetry. He is the Houchens Professor of English at Davidson College and also teaches at the University of Tampa’s low-residency MFA program. He lives in Davidson, North Carolina.
Michele Reese
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Michele Reese is a professor of English at USC Sumter and author of the collection Following Phia. Her poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Atlanta Review, Blackberry, Penumbra, Poetry Midwest, The Paris Review, Chemistry of Color: Cave Canem South Poets Responding to Art, Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race, Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poets from the Carolinas, and elsewhere. She resides in Florence with her two boys, her dog, and her bicycles.
Claire Bateman
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Claire Bateman’ books are The Bicycle Slow Race, Friction, At the Funeral of the Ether, Clumsy, Leap, and Coronology. She has won the Louisiana Literature Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Writing Poetry Prize, a Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Robert Frost Fellowship, a Writing Teacher Portfolio Award from Scholastic Arts, and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina.
Peter Makuck
Friday, June 2, 2017
Peter Makuck is distinguished professor emeritus of English at East Carolina University, where he was the first distinguished professor of arts and sciences. He served as visiting writer in residence at Brigham Young, visiting distinguished professor at NC State, and visiting distinguished writer-in-residence at UNC-Wilmington. His poems, stories, and reviews appear in Poetry, Southern Review, Hudson Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Makuck was the founding editor of the journal Tar River Poetry. He lives with his wife, Phyllis, on Bogue Banks NC.
Ginger Murchison
Tuesday, June 5, 2017
Ginger Murchison started writing poetry after a 31-year teaching career. After earning her MFA from Warren Wilson College, she co-founded Poetry @ Tech, where she served as associate director for five years. She serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of The Frost Place, on the Palm Beach Poetry Festival faculty, and as editor-in-chief of the acclaimed Cortland Review. She has two grown children, Arienne and Jason, and lives with her husband Clyde Mynatt in Ft. Myers, Florida.
DéLana R.A. Dameron
Wednesday, June 6, 2017
DéLana R.A. Dameron holds a B.A. in history from UNC Chapel Hill and has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature. Her poetry has appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, 42opus, storySouth, Pembroke Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She is a fellow of the Cave Canem Foundation and Soul Mountain and a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective. Dameron, a native of Columbia, SC, lives in New York City.
Morri Creech
Thursday, June 7, 2017
Morri Creech, of Charlotte, a native of Moncks Corner, earned a BA at Winthrop University and an MA and MFA at McNeese State University. His collection The Sleep of Reason was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Field Knowledge won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, and the 2001 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize went to Paper Cathedrals. His honors include fellowships and grants from the Ruth Lilly Endowment, NEA, Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the NC Arts Council.
Cathy Smith Bowers
Friday, June 8, 2017
Cathy Smith Bowers earned a BA and an MAT at Winthrop. As a high-school English teacher, she discovered her urge to write. Bowers’s collections include The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas (1992), Traveling in Time of Danger (1999), A Book of Minutes (2004), The Candle I Hold Up to See You (2009), and Like Shining from Shook Foil (2010). Bowers currently teaches in the low-residency MFA programs at Queens and Wofford. From 2010 to 2012, she was poet laureate of North Carolina.
Thanks to our sponsors
The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the SC Arts Commission, and The Poetry Society of SC, made generous contributions toward Poetry at McLeod.
PSSC receives generous support from the Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, the John and Susan Bennett Foundation through the Coastal Community Foundation, and PSSC members.