Hub City Bookshop hosts an open mic night on the first Friday of each month at 7:00 pm!
Please bring up to three original pieces (no more than three minutes long). There will be a galley (free books!) giveaway to all participants! Also, don’t forget to head next door for a great cup of coffee or a fresh cupcake.
Interested in the origin of Hub City Bookshop? It started in May 1995 when a trio of writers in Spartanburg, SC, began to talk in a downtown coffee shop about how they could help preserve a sense of place in their rapidly changing Southern city. What their community needed, they said, was a literary identity. Modeling their organization after the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, they chose the name Hub City because it invoked Spartanburg’s past as a 19th century railroad center and challenged them to make their hometown a center for literary arts.
Twenty-two years later, the organization they created—the Hub City Writers Project— has published more than 700 writers in 80 books, renovated two historic downtown buildings, and given away more than $30,000 in scholarships to emerging writers. It has sold some 180,000 Hub City Press books, provided creative writing instruction to hundreds in the Carolinas and beyond, and hosted lively book launch events in unlikely locales, including an abandoned train station, a river bank, and a concert hall. Hub City has won South Carolina’s Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for the Arts, the SC Governor’s Award for the Humanities, and 18 IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards.
From its beginning, Hub City’s focus has been place-based literature. The organization was shepherded in its early days by Wofford College poet John Lane, journalists Betsy Teter and Gary Henderson, and photographer/graphic designer Mark Olencki; gradually the organization broadened its scope by creating a 15-member board of directors and attracting the financial support of hundreds of South Carolina residents and businesses.
The First Fridays Open Mic Night program is an effort to lean into Spartanburg’s literary community and to help cultivate a fun environment for students and writers in the community. Dozens of people are expected to intend the upcoming event, so add it to your calendar and come out for some fun!
Visit Hub City Bookshop’s website for additional information.