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)

cb

Join the Jasper Project and SCAA for a Reading and Launch Celebration of Southern Voices – Fifty Contemporary Poets Edited by Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer

By Cindi Boiter

Poetry and place come together beautifully in Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer’s (editors) new book, Southern Voices – Fifty Contemporary Poets (Lamar University Press) Which launched on October 1st on the campus of University of SC at Aiken, where Mack is a distinguished professor emeritus and Geyer serves as chair of the English Department. The two previously worked together editing the fiction anthology, A Shared Voice: A Tapestry of Tales (Lamar University Press, 2013), and have joined forces once again to bring us a new and intriguing look at contemporary poetry from the South.

“Because of the overwhelming success of that collection of paired tales, the folks at Lamar University Literary Press wondered if we could put together an equally attractive book of poems,” Mack says. Mack also edited Dancing on Barbed Wire (Angelina River Press, 2018) which Geyer co-wrote with Terry Dalrymple and Jerry Craven. “We knew from the outset of the multi-year project that we wanted to cover the whole South from Virginia to Texas, from Arkansas to Florida; and we thought that 50 would be the minimum number of poets (4-6 poems by each) that we would need to do justice to the complex geography and culture of this distinctive region of the country.”

South Carolina poetry aficionados will not be surprised by the list of distinguished contributors to Southern Voices, among them Jasper’s own poetry editor and inaugural Columbia city poet laureate, Ed Madden, along with Libby Bernadin, Marcus Amaker, Ron Rash, Glennis Redmond, and forty-five equally accomplished poets from across the region.

“Once we decided on how many poets to include in the book,” Mack says, “we divided the South in half. Because I had edited the South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to South Carolina Writers (USC Press) and managed the USC Aiken writers’ series for over a decade, I volunteered to invite 25 poets from the Atlantic coast, the part of the South I know best. Drew (Geyer), a native of Texas and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, focused on Southern states from Alabama to west of the Mississippi.”

The theme of “place” features prominently in this collection, Mack says. “It thus made sense to invite as many state and local poets laureate as possible since those individuals had already been selected by governmental entities to represent a particular locale. All of the Southern states have state poets laureate; and some states, such as South Carolina, have poets laureate who have been selected to represent cities and towns. Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, and Rock Hill, for example, have municipal poets laureate. Thus, we were expecting that most of the poems submitted by each invited poet would focus on place: physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. We were not disappointed.”

But the co-editors recognized early on that the representation of contemporary Southern poets looks increasingly different than in decades past, as it should. “From the very beginning of the process, we wanted to put together a book that reflected the changing demographics of the region, its growing diversity and burgeoning equality of opportunity. Thus, in choosing our invitees, we kept gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation in mind,” Geyer says.

In his introduction to the volume Mack writes, “Perhaps no other region of this vast country is haunted more by the past. In the case of the American South, heavy lie the legacy of slavery and the specter of the Civil War. … Yet, the winds of change can be felt throughout the American South, due in large part to both a generational and demographic shift—the region is consistently being enriched by transplants from other parts of the country and other nations of the world.”

“This Southern Voices collection is a testament to how far we’ve come,” Geyer agrees. “The poets in this anthology are Black and white and brown, straight and LGBTQ+, native Southerners and northern transplants—a mélange of artists from across the Greater South most of whom have served as the poets laureate of their states and/or local communities. These are the poets whose work everyday folks living in the South chose to represent them. The diversity of voices that you’ll find in this incredible volume is reflective of the people who make the place what it is.” 

Launch celebrations and readings for Southern Voices are scheduled  throughout the state. The public is invited to attend the Columbia event, sponsored in part by the Jasper Project and the South Carolina Academy of Authors, from 6 to 8 pm on November 14th at All Good Books in Five Points. Poets scheduled to read from the collection include Ed Madden, Glenis Redmond, Libby Bernardin, and Ellen Hyatt.

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Jasper Magazine - Available now throughout Columbia