Two More Authors Featured Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at Rosewood Art & Music Festival 2023 -- Susan Craig and Evelyn Berry

We’re excited to invite you to join Jasper and 16 of SC’s finest working writers under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at this year’s Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon - 5 pm. Over the next few weeks we will be spotlighting each of these literary artists here at Jasper Online. Come back to this site often to learn more about these local literary treasures!

SUSAN CRAIG

Susan Craig spent more than thirty-five years as a graphic artist and owner of a design/marketing studio in Columbia.  Throughout her career, the interplay of image, syntax and lyricism influenced both her poetry and prose writing.  

Author of the chapbook “Hush” (2022, Seven Kitchens Press), her work has been published locally, regionally and nationally in journals including Fall Lines, Jasper, Twelve Mile Review, Poetry Society of SC, Kakalak, Poetry South, Quiet Diamonds and Mom Egg Review.  Her poems were featured multiple times as part of Columbia's Poet Laureate projects, including Poetry on the Comet and others.  Her work has also been published online in What Rough Beast.

While her primary focus has been poetry, she is also a past winner of the SC Fiction Project for her short story "Beyond the New Moon.”  Another short story, “Sam Macklin Says Grace” won first place in Kentucky's Green River Writers contest.

She finds greatest inspiration in the natural world, and life’s daily curiosities.


EVELYN BERRY

Evelyn Berry is a trans, Southern writer, editor, and educator. She's the author of the forthcoming debut poetry collection Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) and the poetry chapbook Buggery, winner of the BOOM Chapbook Prize (Bateau Press, 2020). She's a recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 2022 Dr. Linda Veldheer Memorial Prize, 2019 Broad River Prize for Prose, and 2018 Emrys Poetry Prize, among other honors. Her recent work has appeared in South Carolina Review, Drunk Monkeys, Day Job Journal, Gasher, Horns, and elsewhere.

Two More of the Sixteen Writers Featured Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at This Year's Rosewood Art & Music Festival - Jo Angela Edwins and Randy Spencer!

We’re excited to invite you to join Jasper and 16 of SC’s finest working writers under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at this year’s Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon - 5 pm. Over the next few weeks we will be spotlighting each of these literary artists here at Jasper Online. Come back to this site often to learn more about these local literary treasures!

Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, recently or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Sho Poetry Journal, ONE ART, and Delta Poetry Review. Her collection A Dangerous Heaven was published this year by Gnashing Teeth Publishing, and her chapbook Play was published in 2016 by Finishing Line Press. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, The Jasper Project's Fall Lines, and the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She teaches at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, where she serves as the first poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.

Randy Spencer is a retired child psychiatrist living in Chapin. He has a B.A. from William and Mary, his medical degree from Emory University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from South Carolina. He has published two chapbooks of poetry, The Failure of Magic and What the body Knows, and one full-length collection, The Color After Green, a volume of environmentally-inspired poems. His poems have appeared in regional and national journals and anthologies, and in 2022 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for a poem on the war in Ukraine. His stories and poems have been in Jasper's Fall Lines a literary convergence. His next book, Andersonville, will be out this winter from Muddy Ford Press and is a long sequence of poems telling the story of a prisoner in Andersonville Military Prison in 1864.

Presenting the Featured Authors Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at Rosewood Art & Music Festival -- Sandra E. Johnson and Cassie Premo Steele

We’re excited to invite you to join Jasper and 16 of SC’s finest working writers under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at this year’s Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon - 5 pm. Over the next few weeks we will be spotlighting each of these literary artists here at Jasper Online. Come back to this site often to learn more about these local literary treasures!

SANDRA JOHNSON will read from noon - 1 pm

Sandra E. Johnson is the author of The Resilience Journal:  365 Days to Balance and Peace of Mind (Clarkson Potter), a 365-day journal designed to strengthen skills to not just survive adversity but thrive from it.  Praised by bestselling authors Sharon Salzberg and Karen Casey, as well as mindfulness leaders Richard Miller, PhD, Stacey Milner-Collins, and Shivani Hawkins, The Resilience Journal offers inspirational quotes by great thinkers followed by interactive writing prompts to serve as guides towards greater wellness and resiliency.  It is preceded by The Mind-Body Peace Journal:  366 Mindful Prompts for Serenity & Peace (Sterling Publishing), which has sold widely around the world and been highlighted in Psychology Today.  Sandra’s first book is Standing on Holy Ground:  A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South, the true story of how a courageous African American woman and her white friend risked their lives to help rebuild an African American church in Lexington County after it was destroyed by racially motivated hate crime.  Standing on Holy Ground earned rave reviews from O:  The Oprah Magazine, Southern Living, and USA Today. 

CASSIE PREMO STEELE will read from 4 - 5 pm

Cassie Premo Steele, PhD, is a lesbian ecofeminist poet and novelist and the author of 18 books including Swimming in Gilead, her seventh book of poetry, out later this month, and Beaver Girl, her third novel coming in November. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Archibald Rutledge Prize named after the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife.

Join Us Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at Rosewood Art & Music Festival – October 7th

You’re invited to join the Jasper Project and some of your favorite local writers of poetry and prose under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at the 2023 Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon – 5 pm.*

You’ll get to hear some of your favorite Columbia-based writers read from a selection of their works, purchase their books, and then meet the authors and have your books signed.

*Authors will read during the first half of each hour and then sign and greet friends during the second half of each hour.

901 S Holly St, Columbia, SC 29205

 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Noon – 1 pm

Carla Damron

Jane Zenger

Sandra Johnson

 

1 – 2 pm

Evelyn Berry

Debbie Daniel

Susan Craig

 

2 - 3 pm

Terri McCord

Ann Chadwell Humphries

Robert (Bo) Petersen

 

3 – 4 pm

Jo Angela Edwins

Randy Spencer

Kristine Hartvigsen

 

4 – 5 pm

Al Black

Ed Madden

Cassie Premo Steele

For more information about the performing and visual artists you’ll see at the Rosewood Art & Music Festival, check out the festival website!