Here are some photos from our 45th annual Haiku Holiday.
Help us celebrate our forty-sixth annual Haiku Holiday–a small gathering in Chapel Hill that features talks, walks, and conversations about haiku. All are welcome!
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2026
Time: 8:45 AM to no later than 3:30 PM
Location: Bolin Brook Farm, 600 Bolin Brook Farm Road, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516.
RSVP: Please use our Contact form to ask questions and let us know that you’re coming.
Our Host
Jean Earnhardt retired in 1995 after 20 years as a hospital PR/marketing director. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Carolina in 1952 and a Masters in Liberal Studies from Duke forty years later. While raising two sons she sold freelance features and photographs to newspapers and tried her hand at short stories and poetry. She lives on Bolin Brook Farm, an old farmstead that has been in Jean’s family for 12 generations.
Schedule
Check the weather and dress accordingly. Haiku Holiday is held rain or shine.
Please bring your own lunch.
Haiku Holiday will start at 8:45 in the morning and will go no later than 3:30 that afternoon. All schedules are tentative due to weather, whims, and twists of fate.
8:45 to 9:25 AM | Socializing
Coffee, tea, and pastry are available.
9:30 to 9:45 | Opening Remarks & Haiku Greeting
Jean Earnhardt and our Executive Chairman, Lenard D. Moore, will give opening remarks. Volunteers in the audience will be encouraged to read one haiku as a kind of greeting. The haiku could be yours or someone else’s.
9:45 to 10:45 | First Featured Presenter
Roberta Beary will give a presentation about haibun, including readings from her latest collection, Crazy Bitches (MacQ Press, 2025).
“This collection of eighty haibun is a triumph. Those new to haibun are in for a treat, and those experienced with Roberta Beary’s work will gasp and smile with each turned page. Yes, Beary, longtime haibun editor at Modern Haiku, writes brilliant haibun. They have famously written about “The Holy Trinity of Haibun”: a title that draws the reader in, prose that is short and engaging, and (one or more) haiku that reflect or expand the prose. Her haibun are exemplars of this, and they sizzle.”
—Lew Watts, haibun co-editor for Frogpond.
10:45 to 11:00 | Short Break
Break until the next session.
11:00 to 11:45 | Second Featured Presenters
Readings from Griots: Keepers of the Story (Unicorn Press, coming in 2026), a collection of haibun by members of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective, edited by Lenard D. Moore and Crystal Simone Smith. Featured readers include Dr. L. Teresa Church, Lenard D. Moore, Crystal Simone Smith, Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy, and Gideon Young.
12 Noon to 1:00 | Lunch and Self-Guided Ginko
Please bring your own lunch and relax until the next session. Or wander the grounds on a self-guided ginko (haiku walk).
1:00 to 1:30 (or whenever) | Basho’s Knapsack
In this session, anyone can share 3-5 minutes of haiku-related news, questions, projects, book launches, or anything else of interest to our group.
1:30 to 2:30 or so | Haiku Workshop
You can workshop a haiku that you wrote today, or you can bring previously written work to discuss.
No later than 3:30
Meeting adjourns.
