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Professor Gil Allen joins South Carolina Academy of Authors

Dr. Gilbert Allen


Last updated May 8, 2014

By News administrator

Dr. Gilbert Allen

Dr. Gil Allen

Gilbert Allen, Furman University’s Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature, has been inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the state’s literary hall of fame. The ceremony was held at Younts Conference Center on April 26.

The South Carolina Academy of Authors was founded at Anderson College in 1986. Its principal purpose is to identify and recognize the state’s distinguished writers and to promote their literature’s influence on the state’s cultural heritage.

Dr. Allen has taught classes in literature and writing at Furman since 1977, with particular interest in working with young poets and fiction writers. Hundreds of his poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in both literary journals and general circulation magazines. He is the editor of the Ninety-Six Press, which has published poetry by distinguished South Carolina writers since 1991. Ninety-Six Press publications have been used as textbooks in colleges, public schools, and libraries throughout the state.

Allen’s poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Able Muse, American Book Review, The American Scholar, Appalachian Journal, College English, Connecticut Review, The Cortland Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Measure, Pembroke Magazine, Sewanee Theological Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among other publications. Allen has appeared frequently on South Carolina Public Radio, and he is listed prominently in Walter Edgar’s The South Carolina Encyclopedia.

He has received the Literary Arts Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from The Southern Review, and many other awards. In recognition of his work as a writer, editor, and teacher, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (Gamma Chapter, S.C) in 1998. His sixth book of poems, Catma, was published by Measure Press in January.

Allen holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from Cornell University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow.

For more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at (864) 294-3107.

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