Lisa Hammond is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, Moving House, Goddess Suite, and Lily Watch. Her poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Calyx, Birmingham Poetry Review, The South Carolina Review, English Journal, storySouth, North Carolina Literary Review, and Literary Mama, among others.
Her writing is grounded in the sometimes haunted landscapes of South Carolina, a setting rich with the flavors of ripe peaches and tomatoes and fresh caught shrimp. Her poetry explores the intersections between story, art, history, family, and memory, all in the ordinary objects of her Southern home. The scales of a freshly caught fish, the sheen of a pearly button, a sprig of morning glory run wild alongside a bustling city sidewalk all occasion a moment of stillness, a quiet observation of the beauty of the everyday. Whether she writes about the remapping of the state line between the two Carolinas, archeological excavations of historic sites along the Pee Dee River, or the migration of purple martins in Lake Murray in summer, poet and novelist Ron Rash has observed that her work “illuminates the small wonders that surround us.”
Originally from Florence, SC, Lisa Hammond earned her BA from Francis Marion University, and an MA and a PhD from the University of Alabama. She taught in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University before joining the faculty of the University of South Carolina Lancaster in 1998. She is currently a professor of English at USCL and, since 2020, she serves as Director of Faculty Affairs in the Office of the Provost at the University of South Carolina, where she supports faculty appointment, promotion, and tenure activities.
She has taught first-year writing courses and many other literature and writing courses for majors and non-majors, including creative writing and business writing. In addition, she has taught a range of interdisciplinary courses, including internships and women’s and gender studies courses. Her online introductory women’s studies course, WOST J111: Women in Culture, won the Association for Continuing Higher Education South Distinguished Program Award. Her scholarship on American women’s autobiography and rhetoric and composition has appeared in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Biography, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.
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| Creative License, by Lisa Hammond |
