In Conversation with Glenis Redmond and Friends

Join Glenis Redmond and other local Greenville poets for a free reading from their new project, Poetry in the Park. As the Poet Laureate of Greenville, Redmond is always looking for ways to tell our city’s stories. This project is one of her civic initiatives as a Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets and in conjunction with the City of Greenville she paired thirteen poets with thirteen parks, asking each poet to visit an assigned City park and write a poem inspired by any aspect of that place. What better way than through poets and poetry? Witness our parks through the eyes of these stellar local poets.

ABOUT THE POETS:

Joshua Blankenship is a designer and writer who sometimes draws. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where he collaborates with his wife and kids to write and illustrate books for Blankenshop, their independent press. He’s the author of Toroboros and Haiku Pickup Lines: Volume 1 and thinks about Magic: The Gathering too much.

Mandy Blankenship is an artist, writer, and gardener living in Greenville, South Carolina. She collaborates with her husband and children to publish books for Blankenshop, their independent press. Mandy fosters a local artistic community through semi-regular Open Mic Poetry events and a writers’ group. Her poetry has appeared in Not the Way You Expect: A Collection of Words on Motherhood. She has been interviewed for podcasts and Adobe’s 99u. She received a B.A. in English from Southern Methodist University.

Ashley Crout was born in Charleston, SC, and graduated from Bard College and the MFA program at Hunter College. She is the recipient of a poetry grant from The Astraea Foundation, has received awards from The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation, and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Atticus Review, and Dodging the Rain, among others.

James Engelhardt’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Sheila-Na-Gig, Terrain.org, Qu Literary Magazine, Fourth River, and many others. His ecopoetry manifesto is The Language Habitat, and his book, Bone Willows, is available from Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. He lives in South Carolina’s Upstate and is a lecturer in the English Department at Furman University.

Reagan Keith works as a hospice chaplain in Greenville, South Carolina. He and his wife live in Simpsonville, South Carolina. He enjoys birding, writing, and convincing his wife to go bowling. His frequent haunts are the Conestee Nature Preserve, The Cook Station, and the Planetarium.

Tinasha LaRayé is a poet, life coach, speaker, actress, and Heartland Emmy nominated director who lives and breathes storytelling. As a spoken word artist, she has performed across the nation for nonprofit organizations, justice rallies, churches, schools, special events, experimental short films, and music videos. She has a strong passion for community and for art that provokes thought, change, and motivates the human experience toward healing and wholeness. @tinashalaraye

Terri McCord has three published poetry collections, the latest being The Beauts. She is circulating a new manuscript. Her work has been nominated for “Best of the Net” (including 2025) and four Pushcart Prizes. Her work is forthcoming in the 30th Anniversary Edition of Pinyon Review and in the Coast Lines anthology from CLASS Publishing. She received an Honorable Mention for the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Susan Laughter Meyers Fellowship in 2024. Among other awards, she earned a juried literary fellowship (2001-2002) from the South Carolina Arts Commission. McCord earned an M.F.A. from Queens University in Charlotte.

Glenis Redmond is Greenville, South Carolina’s inaugural Poet Laureate. She is a 2024-2025 Baldwin Fellow and a 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow selected by the American Academy of Poets. She received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2022. Glenis has published seven books of poetry. Her latest books are The Listening Skin (Four Way Books); Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, with art by Jonathan Green and poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press); and The Song of Everything: A Poet’s Exploration of South Carolina State Parks. She has been most recently published in the New York Times, American Poets Callaloo, Obsidian and Orion Magazine.

Candace Wiley is co-founding director of The Watering Hole Poetry Org., a nonprofit that creates Harlem Renaissance-style spaces in the contemporary South, and she often writes in the mode of Afrofuturism and has been a Vermont Studio Center Fellow, Callaloo Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow. Her work has been featured in Furious Flower: Seeding the Future…, Kenyon Review, Wild Gods Anthology, Killing the Negative Table Book, and Best American Poetry 2015, among others. She left a teaching position at Clemson University to build her own real estate portfolio. www.candacegwiley.com

Never been to an In Conversation before? This is a free event featuring an author talk, Q&A with the audience, and a signing line with books for purchase.