Nationally Acclaimed Poets to Speak at USC Sumter

Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs are the Featured Poets for USC Sumter's Fall Writer Series

by Alethia Hummel

Sumter, SC (10/16/2019) — The University of South Carolina Sumter announced the writers who will be featured in their Fall Writer Series. The presentation will feature award-winning and nationally acclaimed poets, Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs. The series will take place on Monday, November 4, 12:00 - 12:50 PM in the Arts and Letters Lecture Hall on the USC Sumter campus (200 Miller Road).

Nickole Brown is the author of "Sister," recently issued in a new edition by Sibling Rivalry Press. Her second book, "Fanny Says," won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. Brown teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters and the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina Asheville. She is the editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series. Periodically volunteering at several animal sanctuaries, Brown has written about animals in "To Those Who Were Our First Gods," which received the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and in "The Donkey Elegies," to be published in early 2020.

Jessica Jacobs is the author of "Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going," just published by Four Way Books. Her debut collection, "Pelvis with Distance," a biography-in-poems of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in publications including Orion, New England Review, Guernica and The Missouri Review. Jacobs has taught at Hendrix College, University of North Carolina Wilmington and writing workshops in Greece, among other programs and now serves as the Chapbook editor for the Beloit Poetry Journal.

"We're excited to have these dynamic and accomplished artists coming to share their work with the Sumter community," said Dr. Mary Ellen Bellanca, professor of English at USC Sumter.

The Fall Writer Series is sponsored by the USC Sumter Division of Arts and Letters, USC Foundation, Cultural Events Committee and Korn Trust. The event is free, open to the public and intended for mature audiences.

For more information on the Fall Writer Series, contact Dr. Mary Ellen Bellanca at 803-938-3739 or email bellanca@uscsumter.edu.

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