All Over Alabama Reading Series

The Series Vision

Because we believe in building community around poetry at the grassroots—we created a reading series that encourage poets to reach across the state and in their towns to create a shared platform for poetry and the celebration of Alabama's living contemporary literature.

For each All Over Alabama Reading, the readers will be paid an honoraria by Magic City Poetry Festival. All three readers will be paid the same amount, regardless of their publication history, platform, and/or access.

To share and maintain an archive of these readings, Magic City Poetry Festival will make our Zoom account available to the readers.

Those who read as part of All Over Alabama will then be supported and encouraged to organize their own online (or in-person) reading with three poets that they would like to platform and feature from their own community. This is a great way for poets with new books to help promote their books, or to elevate what local poetry slam communities are doing.

Now, please enjoy this fantastic video from the Inaugural event with Jason McCall, Jaqueline Allen Trimble, and Kimberly Casey.

Coming soon: The All Over Alabama Reading Series page will feature a large map that has pin points added for every reading event or poet who participates. Over time, we hope this can serve as a visual archive and reference point which can be used as a reference to share with librarians and educators looking to have Alabama poets read.