South Carolina Book Festival

Letters About Literature Award Winners Announced

State Library’s South Carolina Center for the Book
Announces 2010-2011 Letters About Literature Competition Award Winners

Columbia, SC – The Letters About Literature program, sponsored by the South Carolina Center for the Book and the Library of Congress, in partnership with Target Stores, is a national reading and writing promotion contest. To enter, readers write personal letters to an author, living or dead, from any genre, explaining how that author’s work changed their way of thinking about the world or themselves. Nine winners will be honored at an awards ceremony at the State Library’s South Carolina Center for the Book in Columbia. The ceremony will be held on June 2 from 11:00 am to noon in Room 309, 1430 Senate Street, Columbia. Contest judges and the Director of the State Library will be on hand to present awards. Winners will be reading their letters and each will receive a check from the South Carolina State Library Foundation ($100 for first place, $50 for second, and $25 for third). In addition, first place winners receive a $50 gift card from Target stores.

Level One: Grades 4 – 6
First Place – Ellie Fuller, Hammond Hill Elementary School, North Augusta, SC
Second Place – Sam Gee, Sterling School, Greenville, SC
Third Place – Kathryn Simmons, Sterling School, Greenville, SC

Level Two: Grades 7 – 8
First Place – Dan Freeman, Riverside Middle School, Greer, SC
Second Place – Page Lemmon, League Academy, Greenville, SC
Third Place – April Song, Riverside Middle School, Greer, SC

Level Three: Grades 9 – 12
First Place – Creighton Boggs, Dreher High School, Columbia, SC
Second Place – Stephanie Collins, Pickens High School, Pickens, SC
Third Place – Laura Bright, Walhalla High School, Walhalla, SC

For more information about the Letters About Literature competition, visit http://www.lettersaboutliterature.org/.

SC Academy of Authors 2011 Induction Ceremony

South Carolina Academy of Authors 2011 Induction Ceremony from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

SC Academy of Authors 2011 Poetry Brunch

SC Academy of Authors 2011 Poetry Brunch from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

Join us for Brunching with Authors at the SC Book Festival!

The ^SCBook Festival in partnership with the South Carolina Center for the Book is happy to announce that tickets are now available for Brunching with Authors! The fifth annual Brunching with Authors is a special ticketed literary event that will feature a moveable feast of authors from the ^SCBook Festival at a gourmet brunch.

When: Sunday, May 15, 9:30 – 11:00 a.m.

Where: Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center (Ballroom C), 1101 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC 29201
Directions to Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center

What: A moveable feast of authors and gourmet brunch

Author guests at Brunching with Authors come from a wide variety of genres. This year’s guest list includes: Mario Acevedo, C.J. Box, Eleanor Brown, Nan K. Chase, Robert Dugoni, Warner M. Montgomery, Patricia Moore-Pastides, Lisa Patton, Martha Southgate, Susan Vreeland, Kathryn R. Wall, Karen White, and more!

Tickets are $35 per person or $210 for a table of seven (one free ticket when you purchase a table).

Payment: Buy your tickets online through secure online payment or send a check to the

^SCBook Festival, P.O. Box 5287, Columbia, SC 29250. (**Please be sure to indicate the names of your guests.)

Click here to buy your tickets via secure online payment!

We hope you will join us for this exciting event!

Speaker @ the Center – William W. Starr

Speaker @ the Center – William W. Starr from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

Bill Starr discusses his book, Whiskey, Kilts and the Loch Ness Monster: Traveling through Scotland with Boswell and Johnson. http://sc.edu/​uscpress/​books/​2010/​3948.html

Speaker @ the Center – James R. Cothran

Watch James Cothran’s presentation about his USC Press book, Charleston Gardens and the Landscape Legacy of Loutrel Briggs.

Speaker @ the Center – James R. Cothran from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

One Book, One Columbia

The City of Columbia and Richland County Public Library have joined forces to launch our first citywide reading adventure, One Book, One Columbia. The 2011 book selection is “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years,” and we’re inviting all the residents of Columbia and Richland County to read the book between April 1 and May 15, then share their experiences with friends and neighbors. Numerous discussions and programs centered around this remarkable book will take place during the reading period, so stay tuned for more info on all the great One Book, One Columbia activities. So get ready to read, Columbia!

One Book, One Columbia’s goal is to bring together a diverse audience of readers to share ideas, issues, and adventures while reading the same book at the same time. “Having Our Say” traces the lives of Bessie and Sadie Delany, who were 102 and 104 respectively at the time of its writing. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary on our nation’s history, “Having Our Say” provides many fascinating themes for readers to explore. Plus, it’s a great story!

Join in on the discussion on the Facebook page.

Speaker @ the Center – W. Eric Emerson

If you missed the last Speaker @ the Center which featured W. Eric Emerson discussing Faith, Valor, and Devotion: The Civil War Letters of Williams Porcher DuBose, you can watch an excerpt of his talk here.

Speaker @ the Center – W. Eric Emerson from SC Center for the Book on Vimeo.

SC Academy of Authors Induction to be Held March 18, 2011

The South Carolina Academy of Authors (SCAA) is pleased to announce the 2011 inductees, who will be celebrated on March 18, in Aiken, SC.

The Washington Post has called Percival Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” To date, he has written 22 books, including 17 novels, 3 short story collections, and 2 volumes of poetry. Some critics have called Everett’s fiction “genre-ambidextrous” because of its sheer variety in both subject matter and form, including his retelling of Greek myth (For Her Dark Skin, 1990), his exploring the limits of absurdist narrative (American Desert, 2004) and his reinventing the Western (God’s Country, 1994 and Wounded, 2005).

Everett grew up in Columbia, but for years, he has made California his home. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the “Other USC,” the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

With the 2002 publication of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd took up residence on the best seller lists. Although she had already carved for herself an enviable reputation as a memoirist with such books as When the Heart Waits (1990) and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996), her venture into fiction firmly established her literary credentials. Following the success of The Secret Life of Bees, which is now widely taught in high school and college classrooms, Kidd published The Mermaid Chair (2005) and Traveling with Pomegranates (2009), a dual memoir with her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor.

A Georgia native, Kidd currently lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, but Charleston serves as the backdrop of her next book, a historical novel set in the nineteenth century.

Gamel Woolsey (1895-1968) left her native South Carolina to pursue a career as an actress in New York City.  A series of turbulent love affairs, however, brought her eventually to England and Spain, where she established herself as a poet, novelist, and memoirist.  Her verse collection entitled Middle Earth (1931) was inspired, in part, by her long-standing extramarital relationship with British novelist Llewellyn Powys.  Due to its candid treatment of sexuality, her novel One Way of Love was published posthumously in 1987.  Malaga Burning, her memoir of the Spanish Civil War, written while she shared a life with journalist Gerald Brennan, was published in its first American edition by Pythia Press in 1998.
Woolsey’s birthplace, Breeze Hill Plantation, just outside of Aiken, is still owned by members of the family.

The SCAA encourages academic and public libraries statewide to promote reading through highlighting the works of the 2011 SCAA Inductees: Percival Everett, Sue Monk Kidd, and Gamel Woolsey.  The SCAA encourages libraries to display the works of these noted authors during the month of March to celebrate their achievements.

The SCAA will be hosting its annual induction ceremony in Aiken. During this gala ceremony, Sue Monk Kidd, Percival Everett, and the late Gamel Woolsey will be inducted in the state’s literary hall of fame.  Advance reservations for this event can be made by sending a check for $35 per person (payable to the SC Academy of Authors) to Dr. Tom Mack, English Department, USCA, Aiken, SC 29801.   For more information, contact Dr. Mack at tomm@usca.edu or visit www.scacademyofauthors.org.