Hensel named Georgetown County Library Poet Laureate

Hastings Hensel has been announced as the Georgetown County Library's second official Poet Laureate with a term running until June 30, 2028. 

The county library system serves over 40,000 active cardholders through its five branches, each of which connects to a distinct demographic. The position of Library Poet Laureate was created in 2025 in order to enhance the libray system's literature and literacy outreach, as well as to inspire a deeper knowledge and appreciation of poetry locally.   

Hensel is an exceptionally talented and accomplished writer who has already proven an invaluable community partner and educational resource for the library system. He has served as featured reader for the erstwhile Litchfield Poetry Series at the Waccamaw Library, which successfully completed its 20th year in 2026; has led several writing workshops for the library, including sessions for the new “Writing the Tide” group; and he donated equipment and organized a kayak tour of local tidal creeks to host visiting nature writer John Lane for an on-the-water reading and discussion of Lane’s collection of river writings, "Still Upright & Headed Downstream." Perhaps his most impactful contribution to the library's programming to date was recently serving  as the guide for an educational kayak tour to the site of the Battle of Black Mingo as part of “A Glorious Cause: South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Public History Initiative of the Georgetown County Library.” A detailed account of this remarkable program appeared in the June 3 edition of The New York Times in a travel article by editor Anna Venarchik on 250th activities in the South Carolina Lowcountry.    

Hensel’s credentials for the position of Poet Laureate are impressive. He earned his bachelor's degree from Sewanee: The University of the South and his M.F.A. from Johns Hopkins University, one of the top creative writing programs in the United States, where he studied with Dave Smith, one of the most highly regarded living American poets. Hensel’s poetry collections include Ballyhoo (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019); Winter Inlet (Unicorn, 2015), which won the Unicorn Press First Book Contest; and the chapbook Control Burn (Iron Horse Literary Review, 2011). He is the coeditor of the new anthology The Winyah Bay Watershed: A Literary Field Guide (CLASS, 2026), which intermingles poetry, prose, science, and art based on the distinctive plants and wildlife along the coastal plain of Horry and Georgetown Counties. Hensel’s poems are published in an array of journals.  In addition, Hensel frequently writes articles for South Carolina Living and South Carolina Wildlife. He has taught writing at Coastal Carolina University for over 17 years, and served as Poetry Editor for Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature and on the staff of the prestigious Sewanee Writer’s Conference. He is a certified S.C. Master Naturalist and the owner of River Reader Kayaking in Murrells Inlet.

Mary Jo Salter, coeditor of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, touts Hensel as “one of the most accomplished young poets now writing in this country,” while Andrew Hudgins, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, adds this praise: “I did not know that the Carolina coast needed its defining poet until I read Hastings Hensel’s Winter Inlet and realized it already has one.” Given his glowing record of providing inspiring educational programs for the benefit of GCL patrons, Hastings Hensel will prove a model Poet Laureate for the good of poetry and the community. 

From January 2025 until June 2026, Marlanda Dekine, a Georgetown County native raised in the historic Plantersville district, served as the inaugural GCL Poet Laureate. Dekine brought an impressive expertise, dedication, and creativity to her service and made numerous worthy contributions, such as leading writing workshops at all five GCL facilities, giving public poetry readings, and coordinating with the Georgetown County School District to talk with student groups about the importance and power of writing. Dekine successfully fulfilled her term, setting a high bar for future GCL Poet Laureates.