Terrance Hayes + Elizabeth Rush: Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference Author Readings

Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference faculty members Terrance Hayes and Elizabeth Rush will give public readings of their work at the Transylvania County Library on Saturday, May 17, at 7:30 pm. 

Sponsored by the Transylvania County Library Foundation and Brevard College, The Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference (LGRWC) offers a unique creative experience for writers, exploring the theme “A Sense of Place.” Conference participants will work closely with award-winning writers Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Terrance Hayes, and Elizabeth Rush. In addition, conference faculty will present public readings of their work on Friday, May 16 at Brevard College’s Porter Center and Saturday, May 17 at the Transylvania County Library.  Both events are free to attend and open to the community. Highland Books will be on-site with books for sale, and the authors will be available to sign copies after their presentations. Workshop attendees were selected based on applications submitted last fall; applications for May 2026 workshops will open in September 2025.

One of the most compelling voices in American poetry, Terrance Hayes is the author of seven books of poetry: So to Speak (2023); American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018), a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and winner of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; How to Be Drawn (2015), longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry; and Lighthead (2010), winner of the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry. He has been a recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2014 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, two Pushcart selections, eight Best American Poetry selections, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and Poetry. His poetry has also been featured on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Terrance Hayes earned a BA at Coker College and an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. Hayes is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

Nonfiction workshop leader Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth and Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2019, Rush joined fifty-seven scientists and crew onboard a research icebreaker for months. The destination: Thwaites Glacier. The goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise this century; this voyage formed the basis of The Quickening. Rush’s work has appeared in wide range of publications from the New York Times to Orion and Guernica. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Metcalf Institute. Today she lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband and son. She teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.