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
CreativeMornings is a global breakfast lecture series that brings together creative communities for inspiring talks, connection, and conversation around a shared monthly theme
Time: Friday, May 22 at 8:00 AM
Venue: Cannon Street Arts Center, 134 Cannon Street
Admission: Free
Date: June 3 at 6:00pm
Venue: Terrace Theatre 1956d Maybank Hwy
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 devoted exclusively fiction presents local and South Carolina authors reading short stories and excerpts.
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.
Dan Leach has published fiction and poetry in The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, and The Sun. His debut novel, Junah at the End of the World, won the South Carolina Novel Prize and received a Kirkus starred review. He lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and teaches creative writing at Charleston Southern University.
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 4 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
Each Sundown Poetry Series Poetry performance is followed by reception at Buxton Books, 160 King Street.
Tuesday, May 26
Amy Pence
Amy Pence, author of four poetry collections and two chapbooks, will share her most recent book “We Travel Towards
It” (Serving House Books, 2025).
Wednesday, May 27
Ashley Crout
Come out to hear Ashley Crout, a graduate of Bard College and the MFA program at Hunter College, who has received
awards from The Academy of American Poets. She is a four-?me Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has been
published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, the New Orleans Review and Dodging the Rain.
Thursday, May 28
Jason Chambers
The series continues with Jason Chambers, a father, farmer and poet. A native of the Lowcountry, he lives and works on Johns Island. His 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
The series continues an evening with A$iahMae, the black, non-binary writer, cultural worker, Watering Hole Fellow and
child of the South who is Charleston’s current Poet Laureate.
Monday, June 1
Jennifer Bartell Boykin
The series continues with a performance by Jennifer Bartell Boykin, Poet Laureate of Columbia, SC and author of “Traveling Mercy.”
Tuesday, June 2
Evelyn Berry
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
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
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
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.