44th Annual Writers' Festival

Jennifer Bartell has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina in Columbia and Bachelor of Arts from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. Her poetry has been published in pluck!, Blackberry: a magazine, Jasper Magazine, decomP, Fall Lines, Composite {Arts Magazine} and forthcoming in Kinfolks Quarterly. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Art of Medicine in Metaphors and is forthcoming in the second edition of Limelight (Muddy Ford Press). A 2014 Callaloo Fellow, she teaches at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC and lives in Johnsonville, SC.

Tracy K. Smith is the author of three books of poetry.Her most recent collection, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005.

Chris Abani’s books of fiction include The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song For Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections are Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me The Sun: Collected Long Poems, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Romanian, Hebrew, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch, Bosnian and Serbian.

Q & A with Chris Abani, Tracy K. Smith, and Jennifer Bartell ’05

Student Finalist Readings