Join us for the February 2024 installment of the Great Smokies Writing Program’s reading series, Writers at Home. This month features readings from Rick Chess, Molly Bolton, Jessica Jacobs, and Luke Hankins.
This is an in-person event with limited in-store seating, and there is no option to attend online.
The event is free but registration is required to reserve a seat.
Please CLICK HERE to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
Molly Bolton is a writer, spiritual director, teacher, and occasional bartender living outside of Boone, North Carolina. She holds a Master of Divinity from Wake Forest School of Divinity and was trained as a chaplain at Cleveland Clinic, where she subsequently served as a staff chaplain for 6 years. Molly teaches the Spiritual Direction Practicum at Still Harbor, Boston and is a weekly liturgy writer for enfleshed, a spiritual collective rooted in mutual liberation. She facilitates workshops and grief groups utilizing poetry as a tool for spiritual support. Molly’s poetry and essays can be found in publications such as The EcoTheo Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, and The Whale Road Review. Molly was named a 2022 NC Gilbert-Chappell Series emerging poet. She lives with her spouse, their baby & their tuxedo cat, who is their household’s chaplain.
Luke Hankins is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Radiant Obstacles and Weak Devotions, as well as a poetry chapbook, Testament (Texas Review Press, 2023). He is also the author of a collection of essays, The Work of Creation, and a volume of translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems. The founder and editor of Orison Books and a longtime editorial staff member at Asheville Poetry Review, Luke lives in Asheville with a tiny dog named Fox.
Richard Chess is the author of four books of poetry, Love Nailed to the Doorpost (University of Tampa Press 2017, Tekiah (University of Georgia Press 1996; republished by University of Tampa Press 2000); Chair in the Desert (University of Tampa Press 2000); and Third Temple (University of Tampa Press 2006). His poems have appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing 2005, Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry, and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary American Jewish Poetry. He is Professor Emeritus at UNC Asheville, where for more than three decades he taught courses in English/Creative Writing and Jewish Studies.
Jessica Jacobs is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (forthcoming from Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You’ll find a selection of books by Great Smokies Writing Program faculty below. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below.