Winthrop University will host a “Writers Reading” series featuring two established authors in February and April 2016. Creative non-fiction writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest will visit Winthrop University on Wednesday, February 17, 2016 and poet Metta-Sama Melvin will appear on Wednesday, April 6, 2016. The readings will be free and open to the public and are intended to bring literature to life for attendees from York County and beyond. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant in December 2015.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is the author of the award-winning travel memoirs Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana and Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines, the guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, and a forthcoming book of essays about the U.S. borderlands. Griest will appear on Wednesday, February 17 at Winthrop University.
Lydia Melvin (Metta Sáma) received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Western Michigan University and her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in creative writing at SUNY – Binghamton. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, Diner, Crab Orchard, Shade, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner and Verse, among others. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaches in the English Department at DePauw University. Metta Sama Melvin will appear on Wednesday, April 6th at Winthrop University.
The “Writers Reading” series will include public readings by these two culturally diverse authors, and the readings will culminate in craft talks curated by Winthrop University faculty who will engage authors in a discussion regarding the creation of literature, the purpose it serves in our modern lives, and how it affects South Carolina’s cultural history and future.
The mission of SC Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, this 501(c) 3 organization is governed by a volunteer 23-member Board of Directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and/or supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.
