Manuscript consultations, live folk concert, and open mic readings will highlight the 35th Annual Sandhills Writers Conference, being held at Augusta State from Thursday, March 18 through Friday, March 20 at Galloway Hall. Registration is necessary for the conference; however, several free programs are presented by conference participants. The annual conference is presented by the Department of Communications and Professional Writing.
The conference will kick off with a keynote address by poet and author Kimiko Hahn at 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 18, in Galloway Hall. Her work often explores desire and death, and the intersections of conflicting identities. A distinguished professor in the English department at Queens College/CUNY, Ms. Hahn is the recipient of fellowships from the National and New York Endowments for the Arts. She is a recipient of the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and an Association of Asian American Studies’ Literature Award. Ms. Hahn received bachelor degrees in English and East Asian studies from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in Japanese literature from Columbia University.
Singer and songwriter Caroline Aiken will perform live that afternoon at 2:45 p.m. Immediately following the concert, she will participate in a question/answer session with the audience. In 2006, Ms. Aiken received a Grammy nomination for Contemporary Folk CD and has played thousands of shows in the United States and abroad. She has also recorded and shared stages with artists such as The Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, and Dan Fogelberg.
Other writers and speakers include literary agent Brandi Bowles and literature evaluators Joshilyn Jackson, Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, and David Starkey. The conference will conclude with an awards presentation at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 20, in Galloway Hall. The Morgan Fitz-George Kuhl Student Writer Award also will be presented, and manuscripts taking first place awards will be published on the conference web site.
For more information, call Anthony Kellman, conference director and professor in the Department of Communications and Professional Writing, at 706-667-4437.
Mar 1, 2010
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