Featured image for post: The Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series Welcomes Poet Shelby Stephenson on September 16

The Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series Welcomes Poet Shelby Stephenson on September 16

WILSON, N.C. — September 6, 2021 — Barton College will welcome former North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson as the featured speaker for this year’s Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series Lecture. The program will be held on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m. in Howard Chapel on campus.

This event is open to the public at no charge, and the community is invited to attend. Please note that all guests attending the event must wear face masks and observe social distancing protocols.

Stephenson served as North Carolina Poet Laureate from 2015-2018 and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, most recently “More” and “Shelby’s Lady: The Hog Poems.”  Earlier titles include “Possum,” winner of Brockman-Campbell Award; “Elegies for Small Game,” winner of Roanoke-Chowan Award; “Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl,” winner of the Bellday Prize; “Paul’s Hill: Homage to Whitman”; “Our World”; “Fiddledeedee”; “Nin’s Poem”; and “Slavery and Freedom on Paul’s Hill.”

A member of the Society of Distinguished Alumni, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is Professor Emeritus at University of North Carolina-Pembroke, where he served as editor of Pembroke Magazine from 1979 until his retirement in 2010. Stephenson was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2014 and won the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2001.

With his wife and brothers, he created four CDs, including “Hank Williams Tribute.” With intense, lyrical language, Stephenson sings history and exposes its wrongs as he celebrates everyday people and the natural world. He lives at the Paul’s Hill homeplace where he was born, near McGee’s Crossroads, about 10 miles northwest of Benson.

About the Joyce T. Boone Southern Authors Series — 

Joyce T. Boone graduated from Atlantic Christian College with degrees in business administration (1978) and nursing (1988). An enthusiastic advocate for students and alumni of Barton College, Boone believed in the mission of the small, private, liberal arts college. She served on both the Barton College Board of Trustees and the Barton Alumni Council. Boone was president-elect of the Barton College Alumni Council when she passed away in October 2004.

For more information about this event, contact Dr. Rebecca Godwin, Elizabeth H. Jordan Chair for Southern Literature, at 252-399-6364 or rlgodwin@barton.edu.

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