Hub City Press to Publish J. Drew Lanham's next collection of poetry

Hub City Press is proud to announce it will publish J. Drew Lanham's next poetry collection, Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves, in the fall of 2024. Hub City Press previously published Lanham's Sparrow Envy: A Field Guide to Birds and Beasts. J. Drew Lanham is a bird watcher, naturalist, hunter-conservationist, poet, and Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. His poems appear in Emergence Magazine, Orion, Cutthroat, Flycatcher, and other outlets. He is the author of Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts, Edisto Poems, and a memoir, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a sensuous journey into wildness and Black being. Noticing nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection, Joy is the Justice offers a path from bitter history to the present predicament with reconciliation and eco-reparation as hopeful destinations. The titular poem was described by Emergence Magazine as "a celebration of the radical act of joy through lifting up liberation, reparations, justice, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world."

Lanham is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina and he lives in Seneca, South Carolina. In 2022, Lanham received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Other awards include the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award (National Audubon Society), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award (North American Association for Environmental Education), and the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation (Center for Biological Diversity). Most recently, he was awarded the Roland P. Alston Communication Award from Clemson, and the Tommy Wyche Conservation Award from Upstate Forever, a South Carolina land conservancy.