Ed Madden is the author of five books and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently A pooka in Arkansas, which was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, and Ark, a book about his father’s last months in hospice care. He is a professor of English and the former director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Irish literature, queer studies, and creative writing. Ed served as the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC, 2015-2022. He is recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and artist residencies at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil.

A pooka in Arkansas has a release date of March 15.

Selected by Timothy Liu for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Growing up gay in rural culture, one learns to be a shapeshifter. One learns that some stories can be told, some can't, and some get told slant. As he sifts through songs, scripture, folktales, and memories of the past, Ed Madden finds in the Irish pooka/púca—shapeshifter, trickster, beast—a figure for longing, loss, and the liberation of stories too long held inside.

Zoom link for Friday night only:

Friday's Zoom Link

Saturday Seminar 

FORMS, ENCOUNTERS, GHOSTS: The barber shop. The grocery store. Your own kitchen. A song, a psalm, a fairytale. Encounters real or imagined. Texts that haunt you. Writing what you don't know in the form of what you know.

This a paid in person event.  Members $10 and Non Members $15.   Members Link Non-Members Link

(No charge for Students or attendees on Zoom: Zoom attendees are observation only, but it will help us if you register so we know how many are coming!)

Zoom or Student Registration

Saturday Zoom link:

Our opening reader for this event is Cora Schipra:

Cora Schipa is a writing tutor and recent College of Charleston graduate in Creative Writing and Sociology. In 2020, she received the McCray Nickens Prize in Poetry as well as the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Prize in Fiction. Her poetry is forthcoming in a public exhibition sponsored by Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World in August 2022.