SC Humanities leader to receive prestigious advocacy award
Akers to be recognized for literary advocacy
Randy Akers, executive director of South Carolina Humanities, has been selected to receive the 2023 Frances Mims-Paul Talmadge Literary Advocacy Award.
[caption id="attachment_53991" align="alignright" width="200"]
Randy Akers. SC Humanities photo.[/caption]
Given biennially by the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the award honors a person, persons or organization that demonstrate or have demonstrated long and continuing service to the literary arts in South Carolina.
“The South Carolina Academy of Authors was founded to advocate the talents of the many extraordinary writers of the state,” Marybeth Evans, chair of the SCAA board of governors, said.
“Under the many years of Dr. Akers’ directorship of South Carolina Humanities, that advocacy has continued with its links to South Carolina’s cultural heritage and history.”
Now in his 35th year as executive director of South Carolina Humanities, Akers is the longest-serving executive director of a humanities council in the United States. He is the second recipient of the Mims-Talmadge award. Sara June Goldstein, the long-serving literary arts coordinator at the South Carolina Arts Commission, was the first, in 2021.
Founded in 1986 at Anderson University, then Anderson College, the SCAA’s principal purpose is to identify and recognize the state’s distinguished writers and promote their literature’s influence on our cultural heritage. The late Frances Mims, an English professor at Anderson College, and the late Paul Talmadge, a vice president and academic dean at Anderson College, established the academy together. The SCAA’s literary advocacy award honors them.
Akers will be honored at a luncheon Oct. 28 in the Campus Room at the University of South Carolina. For information and tickets, click here.
Fall Lines will accept submissions of previously unpublished poetry, essays, short fiction, and flash fiction through July 31, 2023. While the editors of Fall Lines hope to attract the work of writers and poets from the Carolinas and the Southeastern U.S., acceptance of work is not dependent upon residence. Publication in Fall Lines will be determined by a panel of judges and accepted authors will be notified by Dec. 31, 2023 with a publication date in early 2024.
This year we are offering three cash prizes of $250 each. The Saluda River Prize for Poetry and the Broad River Prize for Prose sponsored by the Richland Library Friends and Foundation as well as the Combahee River Prize which will be awarded to an S.C. writer of color in either poetry or prose.
Fine Print
Now accepting applications, the 
