Board of Directors
Zanice Bond has made Alabama home for over a decade and is passionate about the arts and the humanities both in and out of the classroom. She is on the board of the Alabama Writers’ Forum and serves as its Vice President. Dr. Bond earned her Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Kansas and is currently an associate
Jay Lamar served as the executive director of the Alabama Bicentennial Commission from 2014 through 2020. Before that she was the director of Special Programs for Auburn University Libraries and for the AU Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies and managing editor of Auburn Speaks, an annual publication of
Author of one full-length poetry book, two award-winning chapbooks, a composition handbook, and editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Dr. Charlotte Pence is the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama. Her writing has received awards and fellowships from the
Tina Mozelle Braziel won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for Known by Salt (Anhinga Press). She co-authored Glass Cabin (Pulley Press) with her husband, writer James Braziel. An Alabama Poetry Delegate, she has been awarded a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park,
Dr. Donna Estill is currently Dean of Humanities & Social Sciences at Calhoun Community College. She holds a BA in Journalism with a minor in French from the University of Alabama, an MA in English from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and an EdD from the University of Alabama. After working as a budget analyst
Suzanne La Rosa is a founder and publisher of NewSouth Books, an independent publisher in Montgomery, Alabama. New South publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books. In 2022, NewSouth was acquired as an imprint of the University of Georgia Press. Books from NewSouth have been recognized by critics for outstanding writing and strong cultural content. The house’s fiction and
Julie Friedman graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Alabama with a BA in Art History. She served on the Boards of the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Alabama Committee), the Alabama Writers’ Forum, the Mobile Arts Council, the Mobile Opera, Mobile Ballet, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the History Museum of Mobile.
Jacqueline Allen Trimble is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow (Poetry), a Cave Canem Fellow, and a two-time Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Louisville Review, The Offing, and Poet Lore and has been featured by Poem of the Day, Poem-a Day, and Poetry Daily.
Sandra Whatley Washington, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, graduated from Alabama State University and Auburn University. She was a cooperating teacher for the “Writing Our Stories” Program for 10 years at the Wallace School on the Mt. Meigs Campus. She retired from Alabama Department of Youth Services after
Lauren Slaughter is a former NEA fellow in poetry, the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and author of the poetry collections, Spectacle (2022) and a lesson in smallness (2015). Her poems, essays, and short stories appear in Image, Harvard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Pleiades, and 32 Poems, among many other places.
Kimberly Casey is Founder and Director of Out Loud HSV, a nonprofit literary arts organization. She also works as Poetry Editor for Passengers Press and is currently on the Board. Her publications have appeared in various publications, including Where the Water Begins (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2021), COMP Interdisciplinary Journal (2024), Out Loud HSV: A Year In Review (2015-2024), Poetry Magazine (2021),
Tom Perrin is Chair of the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication; Director of the Hobbs Honors Program and Academic Outreach; and Professor of English at Huntingdon College. He chairs Huntingdon’s Race and Justice Initiative. Books include The Crooked Man (2024) and The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism and Form, 1945-75.
Sue Brannan Walker is a returning board member, having served on the founding executive committee of the Forum from 1992 -1995. Walker was commissioned as Alabama’s Poet Laureate in 2004 by Gov. Bob Riley. She holds an M.A., M.Ed., and Ph.D. from Tulane University. She is known nationally and internationally for her poetry
Jeanie Thompson, founding executive director emerita of the Forum, is a published poet, essayist, an editor, and arts education advocate. She has published five collections of poetry — The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller, The Seasons Bear Us, White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems, Witness, and How to Enter the River.
Jim Buford is a management consultant whose published creative work includes essays, short stories, and social history. He is the former Southern Literature columnist for The Montgomery Advertiser.
Buford’s latest creative work is The House Across the Road, and Other Stories
