Join the UGA Special Collections Libraries and The Georgia Review on Friday, April 24th at 6pm at Athica Athens Institute of Contemporary Art for the induction of 2026 Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductees Alice Friman and Charlie Smith. Enjoy poetry readings of both Smith and Friman's works, with the formal induction of both poets into the Hall of Fame to follow. After the induction, attendees will enjoy a light reception and the art gallery of Athica.
This event is free and open to the public! Free parking can be found in the complex in which Athica is located.
More about the authors:
Alice Friman is an award-winning poet and author of eight full-length books, including Blood Weather, The View from Saturn, and Vinculum. Friman’s poetry has won numerous awards, including two Pushcart Prizes, the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry in 2012 for Vinculum, three prizes form the Poetry Society of America, and the Ezra Pound Poetry Award. She received the James Boatwright Prize in 2001 from Shenandoah, first prize in Abiko Quarterly’s 1994 International Poetry Contest (Japan), the Erika Mumford Prize in 1990 and 2008, and many more. Her most recent work, On the Overnight Train: New and Selected Poems, was released February 2024 by the LSU Press, and is the winner of the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize in 2025.
Charlie Smith is a poet and novelist of whom the poet David Bottoms said, “For pure, raw power of language, nobody in his generation comes close to Charlie Smith.” Smith has published ten collections of poetry, eight novels, and one collection of novellas. Five of his books were selected as New York Times Notable Books. Smith has won numerous awards for his works, including the Aga Khan Prize from The Paris Review, the National Poetry Series Award, the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine, and the Great Lakes New Poets Award. He received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Smith’s most recent novel is Ginny Gall (HarperCollins, 2016), and he has just published I Am Your Lifeguard: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2026).