More than seventy years have passed since someone has undertaken the enormous task of capturing South Carolina's literary heritage in a book cataloging Palmetto State writer s. That didn't stop Edwin C. Epps, a self-proclaimed "harmless drudge," who has been researching and writing Literary South Carolina around his busy schedule as an English teacher at Spartanburg High School.

"I decided to write this book, finally, because no one else was doing it," Epps says. "For years I put off beginning, thinking that surely someone else had a similar project in the works. As the years passed without such title emerging, it began to look like I would have to do it.

"I have loved the history and literature of South Carolina almost ever since I learned to read. In some ways it was inevitable that I would one day write this book."

The Hub City Writers Project is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Literary South Carolina . Fully illustrated, Epps's 216-page book explores the contributions of more than three hundred South Carolina writers from colonial times to the present. Hub City will begin taking orders for Literary South Carolina on Feb. 1. The book is available in paperback for $20 and in limited edition hardback for $40. [For more information on this title, or to order, please click on the book cover above.]

The official statewide release of Literary South Carolina will be held at the 2004 South Carolina Book Festival held at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, Feb. 28-29 (www.scbookfestival.org). Hub City invites the public to visit its booth there, where Epps will autograph copies of his book.

Thanks go to several important benefactors for helping underwrite the costs of this project: the South Carolina Arts Commission, the South Carolina State Library System, the South Carolina Humanities Council, Bea and Dennis Bruce of Spartanburg, the Phifer/Johnson Foundation of Spartanburg, and Catherine E. Woodard of New York City.

Writers and editors throughout Spartanburg County came together to assist with the production of Literary South Carolina . They included Beth Wickenburg Ely, Pamela Ivey Huggins, Tom Johnson, John Lane, Jill McBurney, Gibson Smith, Betsy Teter, and Susan Thoms. The book, Hub City's nineteenth title, is designed by Mark Olencki of Spartanburg, who also took the cover photographs at the Caroliniana Library in Columbia. BACK