Monday, April 21, 2008

Sat., Apr. 26: SC Poetry Initiative's Awards Celebration, Columbia, SC

2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s
Single-Poem and Book Contest Awards Celebration


Date: Saturday, April 26
Time: 2 to 4 p.m.
Place: Columbia Museum of Art
Corner of Hampton & Main
Columbia, SC
Free & open to the public

This year’s 2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s Single-Poem and Book Awards Ceremony is definitely an event worth raving about. Enjoy a tour of the Columbia Museum’s Excavating Egypt Exhibit, some music, a bit of food, and POETRY. Here are further details about the day's happenings and features:

* Announcement of this year’s SINGLE-POEM CONTEST winners…the short list (top placement winners) and the long list to include the naming of the top twenty winners. Co-Sponsored by The State Newspaper, judged by Gabeba Baderoon. Awards include $400 for 1st place, $300 for 2nd place, $200 for 3rd place, and $100 for People’s Choice.

* Announcement of this year’s SC POETRY BOOK PRIZE winner.

* FEATURED READING by this year’s Book Contest judge, poet ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, and the winners of the three previous year’s SC Poetry Initiative's SC Poetry Book Prize: Susan Meyers, Keep and Give Away (2005 Winner, USC Press, 2006), Ray McManus, Driving through the Country before You Are Born (2006 Winner, USC Press, 2006), and Ed Madden, Signals (2007 Winner, USC Press, 2008).

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has read her work across the U.S. and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Her most-recent honors are the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that "contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954," and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. She is a professor at Yale University, and for the academic year 2007-2008 she is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

SC Poetry Initiative

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