Meet Our Grantee-Partner: Hub City Writers Project 

Mission: Cultivating readers and nurturing writers in both the Spartanburg community and throughout the South to foster an inclusive literary arts culture.

In May 1995, a trio of writers in Spartanburg, South Carolina, met in a downtown coffee shop to discuss preserving a sense of place in their rapidly changing city. They agreed that their community needed a literary identity. Led by the vision of elevating Southern American voices and achieving an inclusive literary arts culture for Spartanburg and the broader region, they established Hub City Writers Project (HCWP). Including “Hub City” in the nonprofit’s name honored their city’s history as a 19th-century railroad hub.

HCWP began publishing writers across South Carolina and eventually, the region through its publishing arm, Hub City Press. Celebrating 30 years in 2025, Hub City Press is recognized as the South’s premier independent literary press and the only one dedicated to publishing Southern American writers exclusively. It publishes 8-10 titles each year and maintains a backlist of more than 150 publications with a special emphasis on debut writers and books that reinterpret, reimagine, or interrogate the modern or historical American South. By offering these voices a national platform, the press works to transform and expand the national perception of the region in literature and beyond. 

Hub City Press focuses on launching Southern poets into the national conversation while engaging and sustaining a large audience for contemporary poetry. Poets come to the press through open calls, its network of previously published poets, its BIPOC poetry series, and its New Southern Voices Poetry Book Prize. Throughout its three decades of operation, the press has published six poets who have gone on to serve as poets laureate. 

In addition to publishing, HCWP offers an annual writers' conference, a national fellowship program for mid-career writers, youth writing camps, workshops, scholarships, residencies, publishing internships, and readings. HCWP sponsors an annual book drive that places 5,000 children's books in low-income homes locally. Until 2022, HCWP served as an administrator for the Poetry Out Loud competition in the region. 

HCWP was an early adopter of the idea that bookstores contribute to the common good, deepening literacy and increasing civic engagement. When Spartanburg lost its independent bookstore, HCWP renovated the ground floor of the town’s historic Masonic Temple. Hub City Bookshop opened in 2010, becoming the nation’s first full-service bookstore operated by a nonprofit organization. It prioritizes access to children’s books and maintains a robust poetry section and a welcoming place to gather next door to a local coffee shop.

Receiving a Poetry Programs, Partnerships, and Innovation grant from the Poetry Foundation helped establish the Hub City Press BIPOC Poetry Series, geared toward spotlighting poets of color in the South. Ashley M. Jones served as editor-at-large, selecting two manuscripts for publication: Cloud Delfina Cardona’s the past is a jean jacket and Lolita Stewart-White’s black frag/ments. HCWP provided a robust honorarium that also served as an advance against royalties for the selected books. Additionally, the funding paid poetry readers who helped select finalists’ manuscripts. The grant increased capacity for poetry publishing and enabled Hub City Press to discover and champion poets of color in its catalog.

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