Literary & Ideas
Piccolo Spoleto offers a range of literary and idea events, including the Sundown Poetry Series, Piccolo Fiction, and more.
Creative Mornings with guest speaker Charleston Poet Laureate A$iah Mae
Time: Friday, May 22 at 8:00 AM
Venue: Cannon Street Arts Center, 134 Cannon Street
Admission: Free
Saturday, May 30 at 5:00 pm, Piccolo Fiction presented by Blue Bicycle Books.
Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King Street. Free and open to the public. 843-722-2666.
The festival’s longest-running event exclusively devoted to fiction, Piccolo Fiction presents local and South Carolina authors reading brief short stories. The reading takes place in the courtyard beside the bookstore, and, following tradition, each story begins with “I ducked into the alley…”
Since 2000, Piccolo Fiction has featured dozens of S.C. writers, with stories broadcast by S.C. Public Radio and published in the Charleston City Paper.
Linda Annas Ferguson is the author of five poetry collections and the debut novel, What the Mirrors Knew. A former Poetry Fellow for the S.C Arts Commission, her work has appeared in more than thirty anthologies, including Beyond Forgetting: Prose and Poetry About Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State) and Seeking: Prose and Poetry Inspired by Art (USC Press). Her writing is archived by Furman University’s James B. Duke Library.
Ashley Poston is the New York Times best-selling author of The Dead Romantics, The Seven Year Slip, and A Novel Love Story. She has also written over half a dozen young adult novels. After graduating from the University of South Carolina with a BA in English, she pursued a career in the publishing industry where she helped design and implement marketing strategies for novels. Now, she writes full-time from her little grey house, and spoils her three cats.
Areej Quraishi teaches Creative Writing at the College of Charleston. She holds a PhD from UNLV and an MFA from the University of Washington. Currently, she is working on a novel-in-stories featuring immigrant narratives, and a short story collection based on magic, myth, and psychological fantasy. She is an alumna of the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Publishing Workshop, a Black Mountain Institute fellow, and the former editor of Witness.
Leaning into the Wind is a documentary film about Scottish landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy. Sixteen years after the groundbreaking film Rivers and Tides, director Thomas Riedelsheimer follows Andy on his exploration of his world and the impact of the years on himself and his art. Goldsworthy is a self-described land artist so enraptured by nature that he manipulates found materials such as stones, branches, fallen trees, leaves, clay, rocks, vines and icicles in ways that honor their origins. Many works are intentionally ephemeral, destined to briefly exist before dissolving back into the flora and fauna from whence they came.- Thursday, June r at 7:00pm; College of Charleston School of Natural Environmental Science, 202 Calhoun Street
https://www.sierraclub.org/south-carolina/robert-lunz
https://www.facebook.com/SierraClubRobertLunz
https://www.meetup.com/The-Charleston-Sierra-Club-Robert-Lunz-Group/
https://www.instagram.com/sc_robert_lunz_group/
Sundown Poetry Series
Washington Square Park, 80 Broad Street at 6:00pm
Admission: Free
*Signings/receptions to follow at Buxton Books, 160 King Street
Tuesday, May 26
Amy Pence authored four poetry collections and two chapbooks. Her most recent is We Travel Towards It (Serving House Books, 2025) attentive to climate change’s losses, both collective and personal. Her novel Yellow debuted from Red Hen Books this spring. She makes her home in Atlanta.
Wednesday, May 27
Ashley Crout graduated from Bard College and the MFA program at Hunter College. She has received awards from The Academy of American Poets and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is published in Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, and Dodging the Rain. She lives in Greenville, SC.
Thursday, May 28
Jason Chambers is a father, farmer, and poet. A native of the Lowcountry, he lives and works on Johns Island. Jason’s work is built on gratitude for our place in the natural world, and is a testament to its healing power. His writing touches on love and death and family and recovery and mud and birds.
Friday, May 29
A$iahMae, (they/she) is a Black, Non-binary writer, cultural worker and child of the South. They are a Watering Hole Fellow and have featured at Spoleto Festival USA, Festival of Words: LA, NPR’s The Moth Mainstage, and others. A$iahMae currently serves as the Second Poet Laureate of Charleston, SC.
Monday, June 1
Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, SC. She is the author of Traveling Mercy and her second book Only Believe won the 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Prize. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Jennifer is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow.
Tuesday, June 2
Evelyn Berry is the trans, Southern author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) and the chapbooks Buggery (Bateau Press, 2020) and T4T (Small Harbor Editions, 2026). She is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for Poetry.
Wednesday, June 3
Christopher O’Neal Blackmon, professionally known as Chrisso, is a talented artist, performer, and motivator who hails from Lancaster, SC. As a true Renaissance Man, Chrisso has dedicated his career to inspiring and motivating people through his diverse artistic talents. He is the author of a design book of poetry titled “Trial & Error: The Autobiography of the Trying Poet”. You can follow Chrisso on social media platforms @chrisso_livepoetry or his website chrisso1.com.
Thursday, June 4
Kwoya Fagin Maples is a poet, woodworker and teacher of creative writing. A Charleston, S.C. native, her creative practice spans both literary and visual arts. She is the author of Long Eye, forthcoming from Hub City Press 2026; Mend, (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) and co-editor of I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Maples’ debut collection, Mend, received a 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Finalist Award for Poetry. Maples is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow.
Friday, June 5
Michal Rubin is an Israeli living in Columbia, SC. She explores her connection to Israel, loving it, and rebuking it.
She is the author of a chapbook, and three manuscripts There are days that I am dead, Your stories look me in the eyes, And the bones stay dry.