DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED FROM SEPTEMBER 16 TO SEPTEMBER 30. 

The Write Around Series invites writers to create poetry and prose inspired by the art in the CMA. Join award-winning poets Ray McManus and Ed Madden as they launch the series with work inspired by the dynamic themes of the newly installed collection galleries. Supported by South Carolina Humanities. Free with membership or admission.

Featured Speakers:

Ed Madden is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Ark, a memoir in poetry about helping with his dying father’s hospice care. He is a professor of English and director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. In 2015, he was named the inaugural poet laureate for the City of Columbia.

Ray McManus earned his MFA in poetry and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of South Carolina. An Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Sumter, McManus teaches creative writing, Irish literature, and Southern Literature, and has won many awards for teaching and scholarship on southern and Irish culture. He is the director of the Center for Oral Narrative housed in the Division of Arts and Letters. In 2014, he joined the editorial board for the Palmetto Poetry Series, and maintains partnerships with the SC Arts Commission and local arts agencies. McManus is the founder of Split P Soup, a creative writing outreach program that places writers in schools and communities in South Carolina, and the director of the creative writing program at the Tri-District Arts Consortium. His current outreach project is Re:Verse, a teaching initiative that works with teachers and administrators on developing effective strategies for bringing creative writing back to standard education.