Meet the Southern Studies Fellows!

Join us for warm cider and light refreshments in the Hub City Bookshop and help us welcome the Southern Studies Fellows to Spartanburg!

The Southern Studies Fellowship in Arts and Letters is a first-of-its-kind program that brings one early-career artist and one early-career writer to Spartanburg, South Carolina, for a nine-month fellowship of research, creativity, teaching, and travel, culminating in a collaborative project informed by the region. This program is designed to allow the fellows to immerse themselves in the culture of the American South, culminating with a final joint project informed by their studies and experiences in the region.

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This event is free, and all are welcome! Come celebrate and welcome with us!

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Can't make it? Learn more about each of them below.

About the Fellows

Desiree S. Evans is an award-winning writer, scholar, and activist from South Louisiana. She writes fiction for children, teens, and adults. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming young-adult fiction anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One (Flatiron Books, 2024), and a contributor to the young-adult fiction anthologies Cool. Awkward. Black. (Penguin Teen, 2023) and Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020). Desiree’s creative writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in literary journals such as Gulf Coast, The Offing, Nimrod Journal, and other venues. Her work has received support from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices), Kimbilio Fiction, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Sarah Nixon is an independent documentary filmmaker and visual artist. As a storyteller from Raleigh, NC, it is her aspiration to tell stories that center around the American South. She is currently in the production process of working on her first feature-length film, The Benson Five, where she serves as co-director and producer. The Benson Five examines the plight of five young black men who sought to burn down their town’s KKK headquarters building in Benson, North Carolina in the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, and the ways in which the historical memory of the event has lived on in the community since. The film received a 2020 Emergency Research and Development Grant from the Southern Documentary Fund and MacArthur Foundation. She is also co-director and producer in the post-production stages of The Choice to Play, a documentary short that scrutinizes the agency of athletes to assert their rights as citizens to protest and with their celebrated platform, shine a light on society’s injustices.