JOSEPHINE HUMPHREYS CHOOSES WINNER FOR REINSTATED THOMAS  WOLFE PRIZE

Sherry Shaw of Gastonia, NC  is the winner of the 2006 Thomas Wolfe Fiction prize.Humphreys, the distinguished author of four widely acclaimed novels, most recently Nowhere Else on Earth (2000), also named two honorable mentions, “The Descent” by Lis Anna of Asheville, NC, and “Outside the Lines” by Therese Fowler of Raleigh, NC. A former student of Doris Betts at UNC-CH, she received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University, where her fiction took top honors. Shaw has won a Fellowship in Literature from the NC Arts Council and a grassroots artist grant from the United Arts Councils of  Mecklenburg /Gaston County. She lives in Gastonia with her husband and has  recently completed a novel.

“To win is a great honor,” Shaw said. “This competition is but one example of how the North Carolina Writers Network is a great resource for writers and book lovers across our state. Conferences, author readings and other events create a feeling of community that inspires me to write. You know they are there for you and they want to help you to succeed. Whether you’re a writer or simply love books, their work is key to promoting literature.”  

The first honorable mention winner, Lis Anna, is a prize-winning writer, film maker, and photographer. Her films have been screened internationally, and her photography published in Asheville Through the Seasons, a coffee table book by Twin Lights Publishers. Therese Fowler, the second honorable mention winner, is a 2005 graduate of North Carolina State University’s new creative writing MFA program. She works as editorial assistant for the literary journal, Obsidian III. 

The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, one of the N.C. Writers Network’s most popular and successful competitions , had been suspended for several years, but was re-instituted in 2005 by the Board of Directors, and will be continued annually. The final judge for the 2007 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize has not yet been selected, but will be announced in the coming months.

2006 Inductees to the NC Literary Hall of Fame Announced 

The North Carolina Writers’ Network (NCWN) announces three Inductees for 2006 to The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, a biennial program begun in 1996. Past inductions have been held at the historic Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, in Southern Pines, N.C., but this year the ceremony, free and open to the public, will be at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham on Friday, November 10, at 7:30 p.m.  Please join us for an evening’s entertainment all North Carolinians can enjoy! 

To be honored are poet Gerald Barrax, poet and prose writer Fred Chappell, and journalist and mystery writer Elizabeth Daniels Squire. The Induction opens NCWN’s annual Fall Conference that 400-plus writers from beginners to published professionals are expected to attend.  Acclaimed writers Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina’s Poet Laureate; James Applewhite; Shelby Stephenson; Betty Adcock; Lenard Moore; and Margaret Maron will present. UNC-TV’s “Bookwatch” host, D.G. Martin, will emcee.

Poet, teacher, and literary editor Gerald William Barrax (1933-    ) earned his B.A. from Duquesne and M.A. from the U. of Pittsburgh. He was Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at NCSU from 1970 until his retirement in 1997; editor of Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review; and poetry editor for Callaloo, the premier African Diaspora literary journal. A major influence on young writers, Barrax has been anthologized in more than three dozen works. His noted book Leaning Against the Sun: Poems (1992) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Among his other awards are the Raleigh Medal of Arts (1993) and the Sam Ragan Award for Contribution to the Fine Arts. 

Fred Davis Chappell (1936-    ), born in Canton, N.C., earned a B.A. in fiction writing and later an M.A. from Duke.  Upon graduation in 1964, he went to teach English at UNC-Greensboro, retiring in 2004 after a long and distinguished career.  Chappell is author of over forty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was Poet Laureate of North Carolina 1997-2002, and reviewed poetry for the Raleigh News & Observer, publishing his last column on June 25, 2006. One reviewer called him “truly a national treasure.”  Both humorist and visionary, with a gifted eye for details of character, Fred writes poetry and fiction that has earned the following accolades:  The North Carolina Award for Literature; Yale University Library’s Bollingen Prize in Poetry; France’s prestigious Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers; and the T.S. Eliot Prize.  “Anybody who knows anything about Southern writing,” Lee Smith said in 2005, “knows that Fred Chappell is our resident genius, our shining light.” 

Elizabeth Daniels Squire (1926-2001), reporter, philanthropist, nationally syndicated columnist, and mystery writer, was born in Raleigh, N.C., to Jonathan Daniels and Elizabeth Bridgers Daniels. She graduated from Vassar College, then became a reporter for the New York Times. Squire published fiction and non-fiction on palmistry, mail-order shopping, journalism heroes, and crime detection. Liz told a reporter, “My life has been interesting every minute, which is why I constantly steal bits of it to weave in with my fiction—like a flood or an encounter with a rattlesnake.”  In 1994 she created the character of Peaches Dann, an absent-minded detective.  An Agatha Award winner, Liz was working on her ninth mystery at the time of her death.
 

For more details, see www.ncwriters.org.