Clemson Literary Festival

For a few days in April, poets and authors read their work in lecture halls, conference rooms and even in bars and restaurants in downtown Clemson. The Student Directors of the Annual Clemson Literary Festival Creative Inquiry team, led by John Pursley from the Department of English, intentionally mixes downtown hangouts with academic venues in order to bring the entire community into contact with literature. It is an exercise not only in “town–gown relations,” but also in literary discussion. Students, faculty, community members and writers mingle in classrooms and over food and drinks at free events downtown.

The students on the team divide up the various tasks involved in planning and running the festival. Students designed the posters, others handled t–shirts, E–vites, budgeting, vendors and finding a sound system. On top of individual event–planning tasks, each student serves as the personal contact for a writer invited to speak at the festival. The student helps the writer make travel arrangements and other accommodations. While faculty in the English department chose the headliner of the festival, the Creative Inquiry students are able to select the other nine guests. The team spends the first semester of the project reading selections from different authors, carefully discussing and narrowing the list. At the end of the semester, they vote on which writers to invite to the festival. In order to keep the pool of authors diverse, the students do not have any specific rules regarding the types of authors they choose to invite.

This year, the headlining author is multidisciplinary writer Paul Beatty. However, the festival includes more local authors than usual in order to promote the festival’s goal of becoming an established event in the Clemson community and region beyond. As they look for new ways to brand and market the festival, the students reach out to the greater upstate area in order to promote their event across the upstate. Advertisements were sent to four different counties which cultivated a diverse lineup of poets, editors and authors of fiction and nonfiction for the festival. Through marketing and choosing a wide range of venues for the festival, the Creative Inquiry team wants to increase community members attendance by bringing literature to locations within the community. “Our goal is to promote accessible literature and to invite anyone who is interested in or curious about literature,” Glenn Bertram, a senior history major, said.

In order to be successful, the team divides up the various event–planning tasks according to each student’s talents. The students’ majors range from English and philosophy to mechanical engineering and economics. This diversity of talents allows them to use their interests to work on festival planning while also learning new skills. As the Creative Inquiry continues, the students hope the festival will grow in popularity while cultivating and exhibiting Clemson’s literary community.