Charlotte Pence’s latest book of poems, Code, received the 2020 Book of the Year award from the Alabama Poetry Society and was a finalist for Foreword Reviews Indie Poetry Book of 2020. Code details not only the life cycle of birth and death, but also the means of this cycle: DNA itself. Her first book of poems, Many Small Fires (Black Lawrence Press, 2015), won Foreword Reviews’ silver medal award in poetry. Both poetry books weave together personal experience and scientific exploration. She is also the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks and the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have recently been published in Harvard Review, Poetry, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and Brevity. A graduate of Emerson College (MFA) and the University of Tennessee (Ph.D.), she is now the Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.

For over forty years, The Center for Writers at USM has brought internationally acclaimed authors of poetry and fiction to Hattiesburg for public readings, workshops, and individual conferences with Center graduate students.