The program for the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame will be held March 22-23.
Part of this year’s event will be an authors’ discussion. Hugh Ruppersburg, English professor and senior associate dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will moderate the discussion, set for March 22 at 4 p.m. in the Reading Room of the Miller Learning Center.
The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held March 23 at 10:30 a.m. in the Frank Daniel Foley Jr. Rotunda on the fourth floor of the MLC.
Georgia’s poet laureate, David Bottoms, who was inducted into the hall last year, will participate in the authors’ discussion with this year’s two living inductees, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Regents and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing, and Phil Williams, recently retired assistant dean for public information in Franklin College.
Appointed poet laureate in 2000, Bottoms is the recipient of several honors including the Walt Whitman Award. Cofer, who joined the UGA faculty in 1984, received the 1991 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation in Nonfiction and was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Williams, who retired from UGA March 1, had worked at the university since 1985. He was winner of the 1984 Townsend Prize for his novel The Heart of a Distant Forest.
Also being inducted posthumously this year are poet Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson and journalist Walter Francis White.
Reservations are suggested but not required for the two-day event, which is open free to the public. Those interested in attending should contact Leandra Nessel at UGALibraryRSVP@gmail.com or
(706) 542-3879.
The hall of fame honors writers whose work reflects the character of the state.