Poetry Hickory will celebrate its seventh anniversary Sept. 9, and award-winning poet Becky Gould Gibson and editor M. Scott Douglass will be the featured writers for the celebratory event.
Poetry Hickory was started by Hickory poet and teacher Scott Owens at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in 2007 as a monthly reading series. A few months later, Main Street Rag editor and publisher Douglass became co-sponsor of the series. Not long after that, the NC Writers’ Network added its Writers’ Night Out to the monthly event.
Since then, Owens has published a dozen books, Main Street Rag has become North Carolina’s largest publisher of poetry, and Poetry Hickory has hosted a wide range of poets from across the South, including such dignitaries as current NC Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti, and Pulitzer Prize nominee Anthony Abbott.
Gibson is this year’s winner of the Lena Shull Award from the NC Poetry Society as well as a previous winner of the X.J. Kennedy Prize and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. She is the author of six collections of poetry and a two-time Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet. She recently retired from a 20-year teaching career at Guilford College.
Poetry Hickory to celebrate 7th anniversary (via HickoryDailyRecord)
