November 2013 South Carolina Living Magazine Vol. 1 | Page 21

Stories

SC? ife
L
The art of justice

Nikky Finney
Age:

56

Poet; professor; since August
2013, the John H. Bennett Jr. Chair in Southern
Letters and Creative Writing at the University
of South Carolina
Most recent book: Head Off & Split, which
won the 2011 National Book Award for poetry.
FIRST POEM: Written at age 15, in a pocketsized, spiral-bound notebook, while she
rode a bus through her Sumter hometown.
“It was the worst poem I ever wrote in my
life,” she recalls, laughing. “But there was a
music there—there was some rhythm in the
language that made me smile.”

Milton Morris

Occupation:

Nikky Finney is not afraid to dash your
expectations.
As the only daughter of noted civil rights
attorney Ernest A. Finney Jr., retired chief
justice of South Carolina, and the sister of two
brothers who followed their father into law,
she was expected to become a lawyer.
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