Hats Off! to Philip Gerard who won the 2019 North Carolina Award for Literature, the state's highest civilian honor. Philip is perhaps best known for his work Cape Fear Rising, a novel about the Wilmington Coup of 1898. He is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina. He has also written eleven documentary television scripts, numerous radio essays, several magazine series, and an award-winning radio drama. Philip played a significant role in developing the Creative Writing program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington shortly after joining the university’s English Department in 1989 and has seen the program grow to become a thriving department.