Southern Wesleyan University will present their second annual “SWU Literary Festival: South Carolina Real and Imagined” on Friday, February 19, 2021. The event will feature jury-selected student writers from local high schools and universities, creative writing breakout sessions, an open mic, and a presentation by poet Celeste McMaster. The festival will be livestreamed on YouTube. SC Humanities supported this program with a Fast Track Literary Grant.
The SWU Literary Festival aims to foster creative writing and cultivate a connection to our community by imaginatively engaging with South Carolina. The event especially seeks to serve Upstate high school and college students. This program is hosted by the SWU Division of Humanities and is part of the SWU Fine Arts Series.
The 2021 SWU Literary Festival will feature poet Celeste McMaster. Celeste McMaster is an associate professor at Charleston Southern University. She has published poetry and fiction in Short Story, The Dos Passos Review, Mslexia, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, and The Whale, and is the winner of the 2016 Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Fiction Contest. She also won CSU’s 2015 Excellence in Teaching Award.
Additionally, jury-selected student writers from local high schools and universities present poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction set in or focused on South Carolina. The featured student writers for 2021 are:
Poetry
Carson Colenbough – Clemson University
AJ Little – West Florence High School
Carlton Payne – Southern Wesleyan University
Ben Wyant – Southern Wesleyan University
Essay
Victoria Hudson – Southern Wesleyan University
Fiction
Karleigh Hixon – Charleston Southern University
Liv Keaton – Southern Wesleyan University
Gwendolyn Ensz – Southern Wesleyan University
The festival will be live streamed on YouTube at 12:00 p.m. on Friday, February 19. The live stream can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHxZYPieYuw&feature=youtu.be. More information about the festival is available here: https://www.swu.edu/swu-literary-festival/.
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 21-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.
