Tag Archives: South Carolina

Announcing The Charles Frazier Cold… | Hub City Writers Project

Charles Frazier, Hub City Press Team Up for Brand New Book Series

Source: Announcing The Charles Frazier Cold… | Hub City Writers Project

SPARTANBURG, S.C.—National Book Award Winner Charles Frazier and Hub City Press are teaming up on a new series of books spotlighting extraordinary writers from the American South. Beginning in spring 2019, the Cold Mountain Fund Series will publish literary fiction in hardback.

Frazier, best-selling author of “Cold Mountain,” “Thirteen Moons,” “Nightwoods,” and “Varina,” will provide financial support through the Frazier family’s Cold Mountain Fund at the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. Frazier also will assist in book promotion and make occasional appearances with the Cold Mountain Fund Series authors.

“I have long considered Hub City Press to be one of the very finest independent publishers in the country and am excited to help foster their already excellent offerings of literary fiction,” Frazier said.

Hub City Press, now in its 24th year, is the South’s premier independent literary press. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Hub City is focused on finding and publishing new and extraordinary voices from the South. Among its recent successes are an NPR Book of the Year, a Kirkus Book of the Year, a book longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and coverage in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled at this new partnership,” said Meg Reid, director of Hub City Press. “Charles Frazier has long been one of the South’s greatest writers, as well as one of Hub City’s most ardent supporters. This series will be vital in helping us continue our mission to find and champion the finest fiction the South has to offer.”

The first three books in the series will be “The Magnetic Girl” by Jessica Handler of Atlanta, GA (April 2019), “Watershed” by Mark Barr of Little Rock, AR (October 2019), and “The Prettiest Star” by Carter Sickels of Lexington, KY (April 2020).

“Finding an audience has never been easy for writers of literary fiction,” Frazier said, “so in working with Hub City, my hope is to help amplify distinctive Southern voices and connect them with curious readers.”

Cold Mountain funds primarily will be targeted for more substantial book advances and for book marketing.

Hub City Press titles are distributed by Publishers Group West. Among its published authors are Leesa Cross-Smith, Ron Rash, Michel Stone, Julia Franks, Ashley Jones and others. Hub City annually sponsors the $10,000 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize (judged this year by Lauren Groff), the biennial New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and the biennial South Carolina Novel Prize.

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A bit of old news: “Poetry and politics don’t mix”

For S.C.’s Poet Laureate, An Inauguration Poem Without An Inaugural Audience

by LAURA SULLIVAN

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/14/377028376/for-s-c-s-poet-laureate-an-inauguration-poem-without-an-inaugural-audience

South Carolina's Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth snubbed at recent GOP governor's inauguration.

South Carolina’s Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth snubbed at recent GOP governor’s inauguration.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley starts her second term today. But absent from the inaugural ceremony will be a long-standing tradition: a poem read by the state’s poet laureate.

State officials say they cut the two-minute poem for time, but some residents suspect it was the mention of slavery that got it tossed.

Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth has written poems for South Carolina’s past three inaugurations. She describes those efforts as “safe.”

The poems leaned heavily on nature and animals.

But this year, she says, she was moved watching the protests across the country ignited by the deaths of unarmed black men. She wanted to incorporate some of that subject matter into her writing.

She took to Facebook and asked South Carolina’s residents their opinions and asked them to tell her what they thought she should write about.

“Some of them were quite beautiful,” she said of the posts she got.

Many suggested that the sensitive topic of slavery was the reason the poem was snubbed.

The rest of the story at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/14/377028376/for-s-c-s-poet-laureate-an-inauguration-poem-without-an-inaugural-audience

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True story: testicular “arrest”

[Editor’s note: some things you can’t make up. While the national media has rightly been poking (pardon the pun) fun at the Tennessee State legislature for some of the asinine legislation it has passed this session, this was going on in a neighboring state.]

Sources: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/may/07/another-testicle-ticket-written-in-south/?partner=popular

Another testicle ticket written in South Carolina

Associated Press

Monday, May 7, 2012

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — For the second time in a year, a motorist has been ticketed in South Carolina for displaying a replica of testicles on a vehicle.

A Spartanburg County sheriff’s deputy stopped a truck Sunday evening after noticing the “anatomically correct” display on the rear bumper. The incident report says the driver removed the display after being stopped but he was arrested for driving without a license. He was also given a warning ticket for having an obscene display.

Last July, a Berkeley County woman was ticketed for having a similar display on the back of her truck.

That case is to go to trial in municipal court in the town of Bonneau. That trial has been delayed three times and no new trial date has been set.

[Some final commentary in haiku form:

Testicle arrest:
lifelike on the dash. Driver
in pain; wife arraigned.

Hemingway once claimed that the shortest story he knew of was: “For sale: pair of baby’s shoes. Never used.” I challenge you to take the news article above and turn it into a short short short story or poem. You can paste the results in the Leave a Reply section of this blog entry.]

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Filed under haiku, pain, true story