Award-winning poet Marlanda Dekine (she/they) will read selections from their poetry and conduct a creative ancestry workshop at Coastal Carolina University’s Edwards Building Recital Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 6, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The event is co-hosted by CCU’s Athenaeum Press, the Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies program. Admission is free and open to the public, and a small reception will follow the workshop. Face masks are required at the events.

Dekine will start the event by reading from their first collection, i am from a punch & a kiss (2017), alongside their forthcoming work from Hub City Press, Thresh & Hold (Spring 2022), which explores their own ancestry growing up and living in the Gullah Geechee community of Plantersville, S.C. The reading will evolve into an interactive workshop that encourages participants to explore their own memory and personal ancestry.

“It was important to offer this reading and workshop at Coastal Carolina University because it is less than 30 miles away from where I grew up along the Gullah Geechee Corridor in Plantersville,” Dekine stated. “As a kid, I wanted to attend Coastal Carolina University because I never wanted to leave home. After 15 years away, I returned, and the landscape, and my ancestors’ stories began to invite me home.”

Dekine is the 2021 winner of the New Southern Voices Book Prize from Hub City Press. Their poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Southern Humanities Review 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. They are a Tin House Own Path Scholar, a Watering Hole Fellow, and a recipient of a South Carolina Humanities Fresh Voices Award, and they have received grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission, Alternate Roots, and The Map Fund.

“Hosting Marlanda Dekine is an honor for us,” said Alli Crandell, director of the Athenaeum Press and interim director of the Joyner Institute. “Their work embodies the rich and diverse stories that are present within our region, yet Marlanda’s workshop also invites us to explore the voices of our own ancestry while experiencing theirs. We’re thrilled to host this workshop at the University, especially as we continue several projects that document and highlight other voices within the Gullah Geechee community.”

For more information, and to register for a chance to win Dekine’s first book, i am from a punch & a kiss, visit the Joyner Institute’s website.