The Herbert Shippey Visiting Writers Series features two visiting writers a year. Working poets, fiction writers, and essayists deliver a short talk and reading and follow up with a book signing on both the Tifton and Bainbridge campuses. This series is named in honor of Dr. Herbert Shippey, a beloved ABAC professor and champion of all the creative arts. The faculty advisor for Pegasus, Dr. Shippey retired in 2015.
All events are in Bowen Hall Room 100 on the Tifton Main Campus. and is free and open to the public with no ticket required.
An Afternoon with ABAC Alumni Authors
Saturday, September 6, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
This special event will showcase ABAC Alumni as they have created works of art, manuscripts and magazines. Each will speak about their work, and guests will have an opportunity to purchase copies of their own! Light refreshments will be served.
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Mary Spencer Veazey
Cul-de-Sac Crossroads by Mary Spencer Veazey is an honest, vulnerable, and humorous look at life’s challenges which can reroute you to find your greatest potential. After attending classes at ABAC, Mary Spencer graduated from both Auburn University (BA) and Belmont University (MBA).
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Jimmy L. Hill
Jimmy L. Hill’s They Inspired Me: My Life Journey from Gardi to Tomahawk Mountain is a deeply engaging memoir which begins in the sandy soils of South Georgia in the late 1940’s and details his unique life journey. His memoir is an unconventional story which includes laughter, courage, leadership, family, love, hope, fears, unspeakable family tragedy, faith, spirituality, and ultimately a life of service to others. Jimmy is a 1968 graduate of ABAC.
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Gianna Russo, poet
Monday, October 27, 2025, 7:00 PM
Gianna Russo is the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa (2020-22) appointed by Mayor Jane Castor. She wrote and performed “Glorious,” a new poem for the mayor’s second inauguration in 2023 and “How We Rose is How We Rise” for the Mayor’s State of the City address in 2025. She is the author of the poetry collections, All I See is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic, with photographer Jenny Carey (Madville Publishing, 2022); One House Down (Madville Publishing, 2019) and Moonflower, winner of a Florida Book Award. She is the editor of the anthology Chasing Light which pairs poems by Florida poets with vintage photographs of Tampa. She has published poems in Green Mountains Review, Gulf Stream, The Sun, Poet Lore, Florida Review, Karamu, and Calyx, among others.
Russo is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University where she teaches in the graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs and serves as editor-inchief of the literary magazine, Sandhill Review. A third-generation Tampa native, a mother and grandmother, Gianna lives in an almost 100-year-old bungalow with her husband Jeff Karon and their cat Gingko.
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Skip Horack, author
Monday, March 30, 2026 7:00 PM
Skip Horack is the author of the story collection The Southern Cross (2009), winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference 2008 Bakeless Fiction Prize; and the novel The Eden Hunter (2010), a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His work has also appeared in Oxford American, the Saturday Evening Post, Epoch, The Southern Review, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. Horack is a former Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was also a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His novel The Other Joseph was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2015, and he is currently director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.
Don’t miss a single performance this season! Secure your seats now and be part of the ABAC Arts & Culture experience.
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