NEWS Hub City Writers recognized by the Palmetto Book Alliance The Hub City Writers Project is the 2005 recipient of the Palmetto Book Alliance award presented during the SC Book Festival, February 18. This award recognizes individuals or groups who promote the literary arts and foster a creative atmosphere in the state. Members of the Palmetto Book Alliance's Advisory Committee make nominations and the committee makes the final selection. "Hub City Writers have been supportive of writers while publishing significant books about South Carolina," said Jim Johnson, South Carolina State Librarian. "They continue to grow and encourage writers to grow with them." Hub City's newest book, TWENTY: South Carolina Poetry Fellows, features 20 Palmetto State writers who have received the state's highest honor in creative writing present five of their favorite poems and tell readers what these works reveal about their lives as poets. In May 1995, a trio of writers in Spartanburg, SC began to talk to 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 began to marshal the talents of writers across South Carolina to create a series of books characterized by a strong sense of place. They chose the name Hub City Writers Project because it both invoked Spartanburg's past as a 19th century railroad center and challenged them to make their hometown a center for literary arts. From it's beginning, Hub City emphasis had been place-based literature that encourages readers to form a deeper connection with their home territory. With its first title, Hub City Anthology, t he young press asked local authors to write about their experience of living in Spartanburg. That book sold out within six months and then was reprinted. Over the years, Hub City has published in a variety of genres, including fiction, personal essay, poetry, non-fiction, biography, humor, nature writing, children's literature, and historical. The Palmetto Book Alliance is South Carolina's affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. It is a cooperative project of the South Carolina State Library, the Universities of South Carolina of Library and Information Science and the Humanities Council SC.