It was the year of the thunderstorm and tornado warning. No sooner than we got to our first site at the Kentuck Courtyard, the skies opened up and indoors we went.  The rain was measurable by inches.

We tried to get chairs into the Moody Art Gallery before the rain. Fail.

We tried to see if the skies would brighten and our model train museum portico would work. Fail.

What didn’t fail was the incredible, kickass work of the 40 poets heard over seventeen, starting with Cynthia Arieu King in the Kentuck Annex on Friday evening to ending with Chad Sweeny at the Bama Theater in the wee hours at the Bama Theater. The festival drew a collected audience of over 415 people!

Ladies and gentlemen, here were the all the writers in their alphabetical glory.

Kristin Aardsma * Bruce Alford * Cynthia Arrieu-King * Robert J. Baumann * Marc Burnette * Adam Clay * Juliet Cook * Jesse Delong * Mike Dockins * Robert Gray * Heather Green * Brock Guthrie * Jeremy Allan Hawkins * Jenny Gropp Hess * Nicholas Helms * Jennifer Horne * Brent House * M. Ann Hull * Megan Kaminski * Becca Klaver * Hank Lazer * Breanne LeJeune * Kate Lorenz * Michael Marberry *  J. Kirk Maynard * Ashley McWaters * Michael Mejia * Myron Michael * Robin Lee Mozer * Brian Oliu * Alexis Orgera * Theresa Pappas * Justin Runge * Abraham Smith * Mark Spitzer * Chad Sweeney  * Danilo Thomas * Jeanie Thompson * Emily Tipps * Sue Brannan Walker * Kevin Weidner

We at Slash Pine would also like to thank the Alabama Blues Project for sponsoring Dr. Burt for dinner music on Saturday evening.  We’d also like to thank Ethan Gardiner for playing for his guitar the open festival.

We’d also like to thanks the following venues, some of which gave us keys or were there to help us set up in a pinch: The Kentuck Museum (and its annex we used twice), the Sarah Moody Gallery, Little Willies, and the Bama Theater.

And to continue litany of thanks: we would like to thank the following organizations for their support, without whom their would have been no festival: Alabama Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, Alabama Humanities Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Tuscaloosa Council on the Arts.

We would also like the following programs and departments at the University of Alabama for their support and manpower: the College of Arts & Sciences, the Creative Writing Program, the Department of English, New College, Honors College, University Union, and Creative Campus.

Finally, we personally would like to thank the audience, who braved terrible, awful weather, and packed every venue, bought books, and generally brought good spirit and fun to our event. Mucho thanks.