The past, present, and future of Illuminations, an international magazine of contemporary writing edited at the College of Charleston, will come together on Thursday, July 28, 2011. Founding editor of Illuminations Peter McMillian will be the featured speaker at a launch party celebrating both the current issue (No. 27) and a new editor for the magazine. The event will be held at Blue Bicycle Books (420 King Street) at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Meg Scott-Copses, a senior instructor in the College of Charleston’s English department, will be the third editor of magazine, taking over for English professor Simon Lewis. Scott-Copses is a native of Charleston and teaches composition and poetry at the College. She has published poetry in magazines such as The Southeast Review, The Evansville Review, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Gulf Stream. Additionally, she teaches community writing workshops for at-risk populations such as shelters, prisons, and youth facilities. In other lives, she is or has been a piano and music teacher in Italy, a step-aerobics instructor, and a new mom.

Simon Lewis served as the editor of Illuminations since 1985, and the magazine has been supported by the College since Lewis’ arrival in 1996.

Since its first appearance in 1982 with a poem by Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney, Illuminations has published the work of two more Literature Nobelists (Joseph Brodsky and Nadine Gordimer) and two Peace Prize-winners (Desmond Tutu and climate-scientist Chris Magadza).  The magazine has run special issues on writing from South Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and Zimbabwe, and has featured prominent photographers and artists, such as Simon Norfolk and David Hockney, as well as poets and writers such as Athol Fugard and Tim O’Brien. Dr. McMillan founded Illuminations while still a graduate student at the University of South Carolina.

Peter McMillan is currently a professor of English at Kyorin University in Tokyo, Japan. He is a prize-winning translator, having won the Donald Keene Special Award in Japanese Translation for his book One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (Columbia University Press,) in 2008.

The current issue continues the magazine’s long-standing policy of publishing new and up-and-coming writers alongside already established ones, and includes writers from America, Ecuador, England, Hungary, Lithuania, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, and Zimbabwe.  The writing is enhanced by the inclusion of cover and interior artwork by acclaimed New York painter David Stern.

If you would like to attend the launch-party at Blue Bicycle Books, please call Meg Scott-Copses at 953-4972, or e-mail her at scottcopsesm@cofc.edu.

More information about Illuminations.