Rebecca Ball Rust founded the North Carolina Haiku Society in 1979 to promote the writing and appreciation of haiku in English. We’re part of a community of poets and organizations who focus on haiku in English, as influenced by Japanese haiku, past and present.
Our members support these goals by writing haiku, by participating in events, and by communicating through social media channels such as this site, our Facebook page, and NCHS News, our email newsletter. In 1991, Rebecca and Sono Uchida, then-president of the Haiku International Association, established a “sister haiku association” relationship between our two organizations.
Most of our members try to write haiku in English that are inspired by Japanese haiku. For an explanation of what this means, see What’s a Haiku?.
Our executive chairman is Lenard D. Moore. In 2014, Learnd received the highest honor that our state can bestow upon a citizen: the North Carolina Award, for his contributions to literature in North Carolina. If you would like more information about the NCHS, or if you have a question or comment about this site, please use our Contact page to send us an email.
Message from the Executive Chairman
Welcome to the North Carolina Haiku Society website. We hope you will find this website easy to navigate. We also hope you will enjoy reading about our literary events, including the annual Haiku Holiday conference and past and present collaborations with the Haiku Society of America, Haiku North America Conference, Ackland Art Museum, North Carolina Botanical Garden and other organizations. In addition, we hope you will appreciate the photographs of the natural world. Moreover, we hope you will enjoy the haiku. In fact, we hope you will be inspired to read, study and write haiku. To that end, let haiku become a way of life. For more than 3 decades, the North Carolina Haiku Society has had its footprints stamped throughout the state while its members spread haiku nationally and internationally.
–Lenard D. Moore
Founding Members
The following people were founding members of the North Carolina Haiku Society:
Cynthia DeFord Adams
J. Ross Albert
J. David Andrews
Katherine Russell Barnes
Mary Belle Campbell
Irene Cheshire
Jean Earnhardt
Penny Griffin
Ellen T. Johnston-Hale
Antoinette Jenkins
Barbara McCoy
Martha McKay
Samuel L. McCay
Nancy Frost Rouse
Ruby Shackleford
Christine Sloan
J. Frank Trotman