Ceille Baird Welch Taken from

A Millennial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry

In 1991, in an attempt to encourage and to celebrate poetry in SC, Bill Rogers and Gilbert Allen founded the Ninety Six Press. In 14 years, the Ninety Six Press has published 11 collections of verse by eight different South Carolinians.

To date, the most popular title has been the anthology 45/96: The Ninety Six Sampler of South Carolina Poetry , which contains the work of 45 poets. Published in 1994, the book has been widely used in classrooms, libraries, and writing workshops throughout SC.

After sending out letters to any poet who had continuously lived or worked in SC since January 1, 2000, and had published at least five poems since that date, 600 responded. A Millenial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry contains 145 poems by 46 writers.

Those from the Midlands are Kwame Dawes, Ed Madden, Ray McManus, and Ceille Baird Welch.

• Kwame Dawes, Distinguished Poet in Residence and founder and director of the SC Poetry Initiative at the University of SC was born in Ghana in 1962. He has published nine collections of poetry. He won the Forward Poetry Prize (UK), the Poetry Business Contest in UK, and the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Silver Musgrave Medal.

• Ed Madden teaches English at USC. He has also been a visiting professor of creative writing at the SC Governor’s School of Science and Mathematics, a columnist for The State newspaper, and a writer in residence at the Riverbanks Botanical Gardens. His poems and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies as well as on National Public Radio. Madden is the co–editor of The Emergence of Man into the 21st Century.

• Ray McManus received his M.F.A. in poetry from USC and is currently finishing his Ph.D in rhetoric and composition. His poetry has appeared in many journals throughout the US and Canada. He is the poet in residence at Columbia College and writer in residence for the for the Palmetto Center for the Arts. He teaches creative writing and composition at USC.

• Ceille Baird Welch, a daughter of SC’s Lowcountry, has spent her adult life on the rambling Hopkins homestead she shares with her husband, Jim. Welch spent many years counseling the chronically mentally ill, and it was not until her children left the nest she began to give voice to her passion for the written word. She won the SC Fiction Project, sponsored by the Post and Courier , twice; The Spoleto Short Fiction Competition twice; and her play A Rainbow of a Different Color was performed at Spoleto. In 1998, she was awarded a Doctor of Arts (honorary) from Lander University for her patronage of the arts. While writing for The Columbia Star , she won a SC Press Award for critical writing.

For a copy of A Millennial Sampler of SC Poetry , write Ninety Six Press, Department of English, Furman University, 3300 Poinsett Hwy, Greenville, SC 29613. Send $20 plus $2 for shipping and handling.