Ketron to receive SC Academy of Authors advocacy award

For immediate release                                                                                    March 12, 2025
For more information, contact Richard Layman
rlayman@bclpub.com; (803) 238-3491

Ketron to receive SC Academy of Authors advocacy award
 
Columbia, SC – Linda Ketron, founder of CLASS Publishing and the Moveable Feast literary luncheon program in Georgetown County, has been selected to receive the 2025 Frances Mims-Paul Talmadge Literary Advocacy Award. Given biennially by the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the award honors an organization, person, or persons that demonstrate or have demonstrated long and continuing service to the literary arts in South Carolina.
     “If you’ve had the pleasure of attending one of Linda Ketron’s countless Lowcountry literary events honoring South Carolina-connected writers, then you know just how much energy and excitement and enthusiasm she brings to a roomful of booklovers,” said Wilmot Irvin, chair of the SCAA Board of Governors. “Without exception, the spotlight is always beamed upon the visiting authors and their works, and never on Linda. She has singlehandedly exposed more people to the art of creating literature in our state than anyone I know. It’s a privilege to present her with the Mims-Talmadge Literary Advocacy Award.”
Ketron is in her 28^th year as Founder/Director of CLASS (Community Learning About Special Subjects) and the 12^th year as Editor/Publisher of CLASS Publishing. To date CLASS has released 73 books of various genres, including children’s, fiction, history, memoir, poetry, and photography. Most reflect South Carolina subjects, many of them based in the Lowcountry, with a special division devoted to Brookgreen Gardens. In 1998, Ketron founded the Moveable Feast program, a year-round, weekly literary luncheon that has brought a thousand writers (some—Pat Conroy, Dorothea Benton Frank, Mary Alice Monroe—as often as a dozen times) to restaurants and event halls on the Waccamaw Neck. Over the years, with Moveable Feasts attracting 40 to 300 participants, more than 100,000 readers have gathered to connect with and learn from those writers, making the literary luncheons a popular event that introduced newcomers to each other and the area.
Ketron is the third recipient of the Mims-Talmadge award. Sara June Goldstein, the long-serving literary coordinator at the South Carolina Arts Commission, was the first, in 2021. Dr. Randy Akers, director of South Carolina Humanities, was second, in 2023.
“It has been my good fortune to have the freedom to pursue diverse interests—be it teaching water aerobics, connecting my community with a bike path, organizing music, art and literary events, reading, or connecting authors and artists with future fans,” said Ketron. “I figure if all of my ‘careers’ were sequential, I'd be about 150 years old. I'm hoping for another 50 because there are so many voices out there that deserve to be heard, deserve their dreams of being published to be fulfilled, if only for the appreciation of a small audience. It is a heart-lifting honor to be recognized for doing meaningful work into my golden years.”
A native Oregonian, Ketron began the first of several careers in San Francisco in the 1970s. She received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Whittier College in California and her master’s in Health Services Administration from the Antioch College campus in San Francisco. She and her playwright/screenwriter husband, Larry, moved from Manhattan to Pawleys Island, SC, in 1988. Since then, Ketron has created and administered several continuing education programs for senior citizens (under the firm conviction that learning keeps aging at bay), including Senior Semesters, Campus Brookgreen, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Coastal Carolina University, a position she held for 11 years, and CLASS, now in its third decade. All of these programs offered creative writing, art and literature appreciation courses, and book clubs. For 20 years, Linda owned and managed Art Works, a fine arts gallery for local artists, several of whom became illustrators for later CLASS children’s books.
In 1994, she initiated the Waccamaw Neck Bikeway, which recently completed 17 miles of walking and cycling paths connecting Murrells Inlet and Pawleys Island. A lifelong library advocate, Ketron has served on the FOWL (Friends of Waccamaw Library) board of the Waccamaw Neck Branch Library since 1990 as a member, chair of several committees, secretary, vice president, president, and now editor of the FOWL Community Connector, a twice monthly e-newsletter promoting all library and community non-profits’ program opportunities.
Ketron will be honored with a festive luncheon April 12 in the Campus Room at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. The event, Rhythms of the Creative Arts in South Carolina, will feature the Mark Rapp Quintet performing jazz numbers by South Carolina composers, with introductions by music historian, Prof. Ben Franklin. Intermingled with the music will be readings from six CLASS Publishing authors and one repeat Moveable Feast presenter (biographer/journalist Kathryn Smith). Authors featured include poets Libby Bernardin and Daniel Cross Turner, memoirist O’Neal Smalls, novelist Susan Middleton, nature writer C.E. “Chip” Smith, and Robin R. Salmon, vice president of Art and Historical Collections and Curator of Sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens. Founded in 1986 at Anderson University, then Anderson College, the SCAA is a non-profit organization whose principal purpose is to identify and recognize the state’s distinguished writers and promote their literature’s influence on our cultural heritage. The late Frances Mims, an English professor at Anderson College, and the late Paul Talmadge, a vice president and academic dean at Anderson College, established the academy together. The SCAA’s literary advocacy award honors them. 
For information and tickets for Rhythms of the Creative Arts in South Carolina, visit scacademyofauthors.com/2025mt.