Octave S. Stevenson

Octave S. Stevenson was Chief of the Language and Literature Division of the DC Public Library from 1955 to 1991. Born in DC, Stevenson was educated at American University and Catholic University. In addition to writing poetry himself, he created public readings (including: the Poets in Person series; and the City Celebration Festival, which marked the country’s bicentennial in 1976), and opened the library up to other groups, working with the Ascension Poetry series and Black Box, a journal-on-cassette that did much of its recording at the DCPL.

Stevenson also served as President of the Board of Washington Writers’ Publishing House for a decade, and edited the anthology The Poet Upstairs: A Washington Anthology (WWPH, 1979). The anthology included 110 contributors and was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.