Welcome New JASPER PROJECT Board Members - PREACH JACOBS & LEN LAWSON!

We are delighted to welcome two new members to the Jasper Project Board of Directors!

Preach Jacobs is a hip-hop artist, writer, SC Press Association Award Winner, and Cola-Con founder, the nation's only hip-hop/comic convention. His music has been featured on NPR and Okayplayer. He has a podcast, 'The Negro League' on his Mo' Betta Soul network that includes event programming in the southeast. His latest column is currently in the Columbia weekly Free-Times titled "Fight the Power," speaking about hip-hop, politics, and social awareness.

Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017). He is also co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017) and The Future of Black: Afrofuturism and Black Comics Poetry (Blair Press, 2021). Among his accolades, he won the 2016 Jasper Artist of the Year Award in Literary Arts, the 2018 NC Poetry Society Susan Laughter Meyers Fellowship in Poetry, and the 2020 SC Academy of Authors Carrie McCrary Nickens Fellowship in Poetry. He has received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. In 2021, Len will complete a PhD in English Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and will begin as Assistant Professor of English at Newberry College. 

While we welcome Len and Preach we sadly say goodbye to Raia Hirsch who served us as our attorney on board for two years. Thank you Raia for all your hard work and devotion.