Award-winning author Destiny O. Birdsong to visit Austin Peay on Sept. 24
By: Dr. Andrea Spofford September 10, 2026
Destiny O. Birdsong. | Contributed photo
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Austin Peay State University’s Zone 3 Press, with support from the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is hosting award-winning author Destiny O. Birdsong for a free public reading and book signing at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, in Art + Design Room 120.
Birdsong’s books will be available for purchase immediately before and after the event, and attendees are invited to a Q&A session following the reading.
"Writing beautifully in poetry and prose, Birdsong is as good a person as she is a writer,” said Professor K.K. Fox, instructor of creative writing.
Destiny O. Birdsong's work has appeared in The Paris Review’s The Daily, Poets & Writers, African American Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She has received support from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Jack Jones Literary
Arts, Pink Door, MacDowell, The Ragdale Foundation, and Tin House.
Birdsong’s debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in 2020. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published by Grand Central in 2022. It was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English and history from Fisk University, and her Master of Fine Arts in poetry and Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.
In 2022, Birdsong was selected as the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s inaugural writer-in-residence at Rutgers University-Newark.
To learn more about Birdsong’s work, visit her website at https://destinybirdsong.com/. For more information about Zone 3 Press, contact Dr. Raymond Deeren at deerenr@apsu.edu.
About the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts
Since 1985, the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts (CECA, or "seek-ah") has been providing students, the Clarksville community, and the Middle Tennessee region with engaging experiences through the Art + Design, Creative Writing, Music, and Theatre & Dance programs at APSU. CECA brings as many as 85 guest artists to Clarksville each year and presents up to 100 public arts and culture events annually, including concerts, exhibitions, artist lectures, master classes, artist residencies, and more. In addition, CECA provides the arts faculty at APSU with research opportunities to enhance their professional growth, as well as numerous student scholarships each year to support APSU's own emerging artists. To learn more about the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at APSU, contact Dr. Andrea Spofford at spofforda@apsu.edu.