Daniel Prince
Dr. James Everett Kibler to receive the event's top honor
Another annual event is making its return following COVID. Since 2011, USC Union has hosted the Upcountry Literary Festival, celebrating authors from South Carolina and throughout the southeast. This year’s event is scheduled for March 17-18 in the auditorium at USC Union. USC Union English professor Randy Ivey began the festival to accentuate the continuing relevance of the written word in the digital age. It was initially aimed at young people to try and get them back into the habit of reading books, but the event is open to booklovers of all ages. The festival was canceled in 2020 due to COVID and had a virtual presence in 2021.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. James Everett Kibler, a native of Newberry County and former English professor at the University of Georgia. Kibler is a poet, novelist, story writer, and literary historian, not to mention one of the Upcountry Literary Festival’s oldest and most devoted supporters. Kibler will close out the weekend’s events by sharing samples of his work. Kibler will receive the festival’s most prestigious award, the William “Singing Billy” Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Letters. The award is named after the Union-born song-catcher and arranger of the most famous and beloved version of “Amazing Grace”. Previous winners of the Walker award are Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, James Whitehead, Shelby Stevenson, the late Kelly Cherry, and Bobbie Ann Mason.
Others presenting at the festival this year include Jesse Graves, poet and professor from East Tennessee State University, storyteller and perennial festival favorite Tally Johnson, novelist and poet Val Nieman, Southern architectural historian Robin Lattimore, biographer and historian Fredrick Tucker, local novelist and playwright Dan O’Shields, and Brandon Meeks, editor of the new Southern literary journal Moonshine and Magnolias.
The event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and for signing. Presentations on Friday, March 17, will begin at 1 p.m. and end at 5. Saturday’s activities will go from 9-1. There will be some activities hosted by the Union County Library System and Friends of the Union County Carnegie Library to go along with the festival, as well. More details will be coming soon. For more on the festival, contact Randy Ivey at 441-7279 or email rivey@mailbox.sc.edu.