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Poet Laureate |
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Sue Brannan Walker
As Publisher of Negative Capability Press, and of the journal Negative Capability, Sue Brannan Walker has published poets Gerald Stern, William Stafford, David Ignatow, Mary Oliver, and Rita Dove, as well as numerous Alabama poets and writers. She has continued this work since 1981—a distinguished effort recognized by Writer's Digest when it ranked Negative Capability third in the nation in poetry in the early 1990s. She has also written critically on poets and writers such as James Dickey, Marge Piercy, and Flannery O'Connor. Her collection Blood Will Bear Your Name, won Book of the Year from Alabama State Poetry Society.
Alabama Poet Laureates |
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Featured Poets |
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Sonia Sanchez
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1934, Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Homegirls and Handgrenades, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. |
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Minnie Bruce Pratt
Born in Selma, Alabama, and raised in Centreville, Minnie Bruce Pratt attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Her books of poetry include The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry, and Walking Back Up Depot Street, which was named book of the year by ForeWord magazine in the Gay/Lesbian category. |
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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Living in Alabama, where she earned an MFA from the University of Alabama, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers teaches at Talladega College. She is the author of The Gospel of Barbecue, which was selected by Lucille Clifton for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. |
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Other Alabama Poets
Andrew Hudgins
Harryette Mullen
Julie Suk
Laura Gilpin
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Literary Organizations & Centers |
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Alabama Writers' Forum
The Alabama Writers' Forum offers services to writers and the general public alike through their promotion of literary arts. As a partner program of the State Council on the Arts, the Forum is dedicated to the continuation of Alabama's literary heritage through public outreach readings, and their literary magazine First Draft.
Alabama State Poetry Society
The Alabama State Poetry Society was designed to help members improve their skills, while enhancing the enjoyment of reading and writing poetry by sponsoring contests, guest readings, workshops, and a quarterly newsletter.
Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities
The Center is Auburn University’s College of Liberal Arts center for public engagement. It strengthens the bonds between the College of Liberal Arts and the public by creating and implementing arts and humanities programs that explore our individual and collective experiences, values, and identities through the past, in the present, and for the future. The center also creates occasions and space for dialogue, intellectual community, and cross-disciplinary scholarship.
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Readings series, conferences, & literary festivals |
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Alabama Writers' Symposium
Three days in May of writers and writing at Alabama Southern Community College, featuring panels and the presentation of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer.
Writing Today Writers' Conference
Two days in March of panel discussions and lectures on the literary arts, held at Birmingham-Southern College.
Alabama Shakespeare Festival
Located in Montgomery, this is the sixth largest Shakespeare festival in the world and attracts more than 300,000 annual visitors from all 50 states and over 60 countries. ASF operates year-round, producing 14 world-class productions annually. |
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I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew...
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Poems about Alabama |
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American History
by Michael S. Harper
Those four black girls blown up...
Daybreak in Alabama
by Langston Hughes
When I get to be a composer...
The Ballad of Birmingham
by Dudley Randall
"Mother dear, may I go downtown...
Plain
by Miller Williams
Out of Mobile I saw a 60 Ford...
Letters from Birmingham
by Harold Bond
Birmingham. The city bell tower chimes one... |
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Literary journals & small presses |
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Black Warrior Review
Hailed by Writer's Digest as "one of 19 magazines that matter," Black Warrior Review, published since 1974 by the University of Alabama's graduate students in creative writing, features fiction, poetry, art, interviews, essays, and book reviews by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners as well as up-and-coming talents.
Birmingham Poetry Review
Contact Bob Collins, Editor, at UAB English Department, Arts & Humanities Building, Birmingham, AL 35294, or call (205) 934-4250.
Fairy Tale Review
An annual literary journal devoted to contemporary fairy tales, Fairy Tale Review hopes to provide an elegant and innovative venue for both established and emerging authors of poetry and prose. Fairy Tale Review is not devoted to any particular school of writing, but rather to fairy tales as an inspiring art form. Past contributors include Kim Addonizio, Aimee Bender, Joshua Beckman, Richard Siken, Lydia Millet, and others.
Southern Humanities Review
Publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and history.
PMS poemmemoirstory
The only all-women's literary journal in Alabama, featuring both national and regional writers. Each issue also presents a memoir written by a woman who is not a writer, but who has
experienced something of historic and national significance.
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