SC Academy of Authors Announces a CALL for Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowships in Poetry and Fiction

Submission period begins: November 15, 2026
​​Deadline: January 15, 2027

The Jasper Project is excited to help spread the news that the SC Academy of Authors announces the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker CALLS for Fellowships in Poetry and Short Fiction opening on November 15th

Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry

The Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry, supported by the Penelope Coker Hall/Eliza Wilson Ingle Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation and sponsored by the South Carolina Academy of Authors, recognizes the talent of poets in the state of South Carolina.
 
The award is $1,250 and an invitation to be honored at a future SCAA event.
 
There is no restriction on form or content. Submit up to 5 unpublished poems (totaling no more than 10 pages). You may submit multiple entries, but each entry must be accompanied with entry fee.

The entry fee is $20 per entry. Entry fee will be made to the SCAA PayPal account under the Donate category on this website.

Authors grant the SCAA first publication and electronic reprint rights to prize-winning work. Authors retain all re-publication rights and are free to reprint the work in any publication, subject to acknowledging original publication in South Carolina Academy of Authors annual publication. The author guarantees that the submitted work has not previously been published elsewhere. Entries generated by AI will not be accepted.

We will accept entries in doc, docx, rtf, and pdf file formats. 

Applicants must be full-time residents of South Carolina and must not have won this fellowship (previously known as the Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship in Poetry) in the previous three years. 
 
Your name should not appear anywhere on the poems submitted. Include contact information with a brief bio in the body of the email. Submissions should be sent to scaacokerfellowship@gmail.com.
 
The 2026 contest will once again be judged by Rachel Hadas.
 
Questions about the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry should be sent to: scaacokerfellowship@gmail.com.
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Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction

The Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction, supported by the Penelope Coker Hall/Eliza Wilson Ingle Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation and sponsored by the South Carolina Academy of Authors, recognizes the talent of fiction writers in the state of South Carolina.
 
The award is $1,250 and an invitation to be honored at a future SCAA event.
 
There is no restriction on content, but submissions may not exceed 15 pages double-spaced and must be either one original, unpublished short story or one excerpt from a longer, unpublished work. You may submit multiple entries, but each entry must be accompanied with an entry fee.

​The entry fee is $20 per entry. Entry fee will be made to the SCAA PayPal account under the Donate category on this website.
 
Authors grant the SCAA first publication and electronic reprint rights to prize-winning work. Authors retain all re-publication rights and are free to reprint the work in any publication, subject to acknowledging original publication in South Carolina Academy of Authors annual publication. The author guarantees that the submitted work has not previously been published elsewhere. Entries generated by AI will not be accepted.

We will accept entries in doc, docx, rtf, and pdf file formats. 

Applicants must be full-time residents of South Carolina and must not have won this Fellowship in the previous three years. 
 
Your name should not appear anywhere on the pages submitted. Include contact information with a brief bio in the body of the email. Submissions should be sent to scaacokerfellowship@gmail.com.
 
Judging the 2026 Coker Fellowship in Fiction will be Wiley Cash.
 
Questions about the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction should be sent to: scaacokerfellowship@gmail.com.

WILEY CASH

Wiley Cash is an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of four novels, host of the Our State Book Club Podcast, and co-owner of Floodplain Books in Wilmington, North Carolina. He teaches fiction writing at UNC-Asheville and lives in North Carolina with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their daughters. He is the 2025 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor.
https://www.wileycash.com/

RACHEL HADAS

Rachel Hadas is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent poetry collection is Pastorals (2025). Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants, the O.B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Hadas taught English at Rutgers University-Newark from 1981 to 2023, and was named a Board of Governors Professor in 2001. She has also taught courses in literature and writing at Columbia and Princeton Universities, the Ninety-second Street Y, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the West Chester Poetry Conference, and the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center. https://www.rachelhadas.net/

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE ELIZABETH COKER FELLOWSHIP IN STUDENT POETRY AND HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE ELIZABETH BOATWRIGHT COKER FELLOWSHIP IN STUDENT SHORT FICTION.

The South Carolina Academy of Authors Inducts Four New Writers into the SC Literary Hall of Fame

On Saturday, March 21st, The Board of Governors of the SC Academy of Authors, in partnership with USC Aiken, presented the 2026 Induction Ceremony honoring the newest members of the SC Literary Hall of Fame at USCA’s Etherredge Center in Aiken.

The event included a lovely, sold-out dinner for the attendees, followed by an intimate induction ceremony at which individual members of the SCAA Board of Governors had the honor of speaking about the new members before the inductees warmly addressed the audience themselves.

The newest members of the SCAA’s SC Literary Hall of Fame are Claudia Smith Brinson, Dr. Dianne Johnson-Feelings, Augustus Jenkins Farmer, and J. Drew Lanham.

SCAA Board of Governor’s member Betsy Teter inducts J. Drew Lanham into the Academy’s SC Literary Hall of Fame

A native of Edgefield, SC, J. Drew Lanham is a poet, memoirist, naturalist, playwright, professor, and a recipient of the 2022 MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant. He is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (2016), Sparrow Envy: A Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (2021), and Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024). He is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield County and a Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University.

SCAA Board of Governors member Tom Mack Inducts Jenks Farmer into the Academy’s SC Literary Hall of Fame

Augustus “Jenks” Farmer has created two of the largest botanical gardens in SC, building and elevating the Riverbanks Botanical Gardens in Columbia to national acclaim. He is the author of Deep-Rooted Wisdom: Skills and Stories from Generations of Gardeners (2014), Funky Little Flower Farm  (2019), Crinum: Unearthing the History and Culture of the Biggest Bulbs in the World (2022), Garden Disrupters: The Rebel Misfits Who Turned Southern Horticulture on Its Head (2023), and Secrets of Southern Gardening (2025).

SCAA Board of Governors member Aida Rogers (right) inducts Dianne Johnson-Feelings into the Academy’s SC Literary Hall of Fame

Dr. Dianne Johnson-Feelings (Dinah Johnson) is a professor of English at the University of SC and has written ten books for children, all celebrating African American culture and community. She earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Princeton University and master's and doctoral degrees from Yale University, in Afro-American Studies and American Studies, respectively. Johnson's first published book was called Telling Tales: The Pedagogy and Promise of African American Literature for Youth (1990) was deemed “a much needed resource for children's literature" and was considered for several years as "the only book-length critical study of early black children's literature." She also edited The Best of The Brownies' Book, an anthology published in 1996 with texts from The Brownies Book a 1920s magazine aimed at African-American children which is considered "a major contribution to the field of children's literature."

SCAA Board of Governors member Cindi Boiter (left) inducts Claudia Smith Brinson into the Academy’s SC Literary Hall of Fame

Claudia Smith Brinson worked as a journalist for more than 30 years and was a national columnist for Knight-Ridder. Her reporting at The State newspaper won more than three dozen awards and she was the first person to win Knight-Ridder’s Award of Excellence in Journalism twice. She was a member of the newspaper team whose Hurricane Hugo coverage was a Pulitzer finalist and her short story “Einstein’s Daughter” received the O. Henry Award. She is the author of Stories of Struggle: The Clash Over Civil Rights in South Carolina (2020) and Injustice in Focus: The Civil Rights Photography of Cecil Williams (2024).

The SCAA selects new inductees whose works have been judged culturally important. Each inductee, whether living or deceased, has added to South Carolina’s literary legacy by illuminating some aspect of South Carolina culture and gaining a reputation that transcends the borders of our state. Including this year’s induction, the SCAA, founded in 1986, will have officially inducted more than 100 authors into its literary hall of fame.

The SCAA Board of Governors “believes in the extraordinary creativity of the human spirit and the value of multicultural diversity displayed in the work of all South Carolina writers. It is deeply committed to creating and sustaining practices that promote equity, diversity, and inclusion and strives to support these beliefs and holds itself accountable to these intentions.”

In addition to hosting this literary hall of fame, the SCAA also sponsors annual fellowships and student prizes in poetry and prose through support from the Penelope Coker Hall/Eliza Wilson Ingle Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation. The SCAA is also grateful to the South Carolina Arts Commission for their sponsorship and support.

For more information about the South Carolina Academy of Authors visit the website.

New SC Literary Hall of Fame Inductees Drew Lanham and Dinah Johnson relax during a closing brunch at the home of Tom Mack and Michael Budd

(Full Disclosure: Cindi Boiter is a member of the Jasper Project’s board of directors and the author of this piece)

(Photo Credit - Tom Mack and event attendees)

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