Both women are graduates of St. Andrews, with Copeland earning her B.A. in English in 1973 and Johnson earning her BFA in Creative Writing in December. Copeland's book, Traveling Through Glass, received the 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award while Johnson's book, Miles, won the Alan Bunn Memorial Chapbook Award from St. Andrews in 2008.
Raised in Japan, India and Wake Forest, Copeland has seen her poetry published in numerous literary journals, including Cairn: The New St. Andrews Review, The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology 2002 and 2003, Hunger Mountain, The Kerf, The Ledge, Main Street Rag, Margie: a Journal of American Poetry, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship and Rhino. Her works have also been honored with awards from Arts and Letters, Atlanta Review, New Millennium Writings, North American Review, The North Carolina Poetry Society, Peregrine and Vox. Having received the 2001 Ethel N. Fortner Writer and Community Award from St. Andrews, Copeland was also the recipient of a Finalist Award in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council in 2003 and 2004.
Currently employed as an English instructor at Methodist University in Fayetteville, Copeland has held a variety of positions including proofreading, working as an advocate for abused women and children and serving as a museum curator. Through a program sponsored by the Poetry Center of Chicago, she served as poet-in-residence at Orrington Elementary School in Evanston, Ill., from 2003-2004, teaching poetry writing to children and editing students' poems published in the Hands-on Stanzas anthology. She served as a judge in the Skyways Writers' Competition in 2003 and 2004 and spent a week as a writer-in-residence at the Roanoke Writers' Retreat in Manteo.
Copeland has an MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University.
Born in Charlotte and raised in suburban Detroit, Mich., Johnson is the former associate editor of Cairn: The New St. Andrews Review and also hosted the Fortner Writers' Forum in the fall. She currently serves as the St. Andrews College Press Manager and the Assistant Resident Director of Mecklenburg Hall at St. Andrews.
Writers' Forum begins at 8 p.m. in Orange Main Lounge. It is free and open to the public.
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