The South Carolina Academy of Authors, in partnership with Francis Marion University, will hold its annual induction weekend in Florence, SC, April 21-23.
Besides sponsoring annual fellowship competitions and promoting the influence of South Carolina’s literature on its heritage, the SCAA is South Carolina’s literary hall-of-fame. Each year it inducts notable South Carolina authors at its annual ceremony, a ticketed event to which the public is invited. Since its founding at Anderson University in 1986, the Academy has inducted over seventy of the state’s most prominent writers, including Pat Conroy, Dorothy Allison, Ron Rash, Dubose Heyward, Terrence Hayes, Julia Peterkin and Sue Monk Kidd.
Among this year’s inductees is Florence native and historian Dan T. Carter, best known for his books Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South and When the War Was Over: the Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865-1867, and the late Arthenia J. Bates Millican, a Sumter native and former Morris College professor known for her fiction, essays and poetry. Also being inducted are poet Cathy Smith Bowers, a native of Lancaster, and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Hoagland.
The induction ceremony itself will be on Saturday, April 22 at 7:00 in the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center, 201 S. Dargan St. Tickets are $35 per person and are available at scacademyofauthors.org through April 7. The event will consist of a buffet dinner, music, an awards ceremony and acceptance speeches by the inductees or their representatives.
The weekend will begin the previous evening—Friday, April 21—with readings/ presentations by this year’s inductees. National Book Award winner Nicky Finney will read from and discuss the work of Millican. Bowers, Carter and Hoagland will present from their own work and be available for book signings afterward. Books will be available for purchase. The Friday night event is free and open to the public. It begins at 7:00 in the Waters Building, 135 S. Dargan Street, in downtown Florence.
During the weekend the SCAA will also acknowledge its four literary fellowship winners: Celeste McMaster, winner of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Award for fiction; Amanda Rachelle Warren, winner of the Carrie McCray Nickens Award for poetry; and Julia Hogan and Anna Marie Green, winners of the student prizes in fiction and poetry, respectively.
The SCAA is a non-profit agency that receives support from the South Carolina Arts Commission and benefits from close affiliations with the South Carolina State Library and many of the state's colleges, universities, and corporations. For more information about the Academy or to make a donation, please or visit scacademyofauthors.org or contact Jon Tuttle at jtuttle@fmarion.edu or 843.661.1521.
