Bevill State Community College has announced the lineup for the 2023 version of Read Alabama.
Featured authors will be Ashley Jones (Feb. 2), Trace Barnett (March 2) and Wade Kwon (April 6).
The program is free to the public and provides a rare opportunity for students and community members to meet and spend time with published Alabama authors.
Ashley M. Jones is the Poet Laureate of the State of Alabama (2022-2026). She will kick off Read Alabama on Thursday.
Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida Int’l University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (2017), dark//thing (2019), and Reparations Now! (2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award.
Jones has been featured on news outlets including Good Morning America, ABC News, and the BBC. She co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She teaches in the Alabama School of Fine Arts and in the Converse University Low Residency MFA Program. In 2022, she received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Thursday’s session begins at 12:15 p.m. with an opening reception at noon in Mathews Lecture Hall inside the Wade Math & Science Building on the Jasper campus of Bevill State Community College. The presentation will be provided on Facebook Live.
Read Alabama is a partnership between Bevill State Community College, Walker College Foundation, Alabama Power Company, The Chamber of Commerce of Walker County, and the Walker County Arts Alliance.
