Congratulations to Susan Laughter Meyers!

From the South Carolina State Library

http://www.statelibrary.sc.gov/sc-academy-of-authors-announces-4th-annual-poetry-fellowship-winner

by Curtis Rogers

The South Carolina Academy of Authors is very pleased to announce Susan Laughter Meyers is the 2013 winner of the Nickens Fellowship in poetry, as chosen by this year's judge, Nick Lantz, author of award winning poetry books and the recipient of a number of poetry prizes.

Meyers’ poetry was selected out of 43 submissions. In selecting her work, Lantz stated, “The author’s lines move like one of the rivers that figure so prominently in the poems: twisting, slowing, pooling, speeding off, they savor the precise textures of the world, from pluff mud to laughter like ‘a bale of loose hay’.”

Lantz also commented, “Showing equal ease with free verse and traditional form, the author displays great range, though the poems contain a common strength in the clarity and insight of metaphor and image, in their fresh and exacting syntax and diction, as in ‘Night after night/combing the fog of your troubled/heart, red wolves./Wild, gracile & dolorous’ or ‘Her handkerchief, tatted, an unplowed acre.’ The longer persona poem ‘A Dervish of Sand: That Summer with Her Sisters’ is especially admirable for the complex and heartbreaking portrait it weaves from its vivid, impressionistic details.”

Susan Laughter Meyers, of Givhans, is the author of My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass, recipient of the inaugural Cider Press Review Editor’s Prize and scheduled for release this fall. Her book Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press) received the SC Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have also appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Beloit Poetry Journal. A long-time writing instructor, she currently teaches in various community programs in the Lowcountry.

The Academy wishes to congratulate this year’s winner and to thank all who participated in the competition. Meyers will receive a $1,000.00 prize at a special brunch held in conjunction with the Academy's annual induction ceremony. This year's ceremony events will be held in Columbia, April 26-28, when Jack Bass, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, and Eugene Robinson will be inducted into the state's literary hall of fame.

The submission period for the 2014 Fellowship will open next autumn.
For more information about the South Carolina Academy of Authors, please visit www.scacademyofauthors.org.