North Carolina Poetry Society (NCPS) sponsors this series, which is named after former NC Poet Laureate Fred Chappell and former NCPS president Marie Gilbert. This program is open to poets not currently enrolled in a curriculum. They are mentored by a regional Distinguished Poet who mentors up to four developing poets.

After stints as a classical mezzo-soprano and criminal defense attorney, Susan Seawolf Hayes returned to writing. She has facilitated writing workshops for children in after-school programs, Greensboro Library’s LifeVerse program, and programs for homeless women. She just completed Dr. Anjail Ahmad’s year-long Fractured Writers bootcamp and the Writers’ Group of the Triad has published her work. Hayes is writing poems of her pioneer history and a nonfiction manuscript on home and risk-taking, based on living in a lake house that repeatedly flooded.

Ann Deagon, a 2012 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet, served as Hege Professor of Humanities and Writer in Residence at Guilford College until her retirement in 1992. She edited The Guilford Review, directed Poetry Center Southeast, and helped establish the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Her poetry collections include Carbon 14, Poetics South, There is No Balm in Birmingham, and The Polo Poems. Her awards include a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information about this program contact Beth Sheffield.