Congratulations to North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Dr. James W. Clark, Jr., the recipient of the 2020 John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities.
The John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities is the highest honor bestowed by the North Carolina Humanities Council. Created in 1990 to honor distinguished individuals who have strengthened the educational, cultural, and civic life of North Carolinians through their life’s work, this award has honored literary lights such as Jaki Shelton Green, the current poet laureate of North Carolina and an inductee of the NC Literary Hall of Fame; Margaret D. Bauer, longtime professor at East Carolina University and editor of the NC Literary Review; and Bland Simpson, author, professor, and 2020 inductee to the NC Literary Hall of Fame.
A public award ceremony and reception to honor Dr. Clark will be held in Charlotte on October 29, 2020.
Dr. Clark has had a long and distinguished career, focusing primarily on the cultural geography and literary history of North Carolina, his native state. For twenty years, Dr. Clark led the statewide Humanities Extension/Publications Program at NC State. In 1997, Dr. Clark received the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award given by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for significant contributions to North Carolina literature. In 2012, the William C. Friday Award for Distinguished Service in Retirement was presented to him for his voluntary instruction in NCSU’s OLLI Program and at assisted living center life-writing workshops in the Raleigh area. In 2017, he completed a decade as president of The Paul Green Foundation, still serves as president of The North Caroliniana Society.
The North Carolina Humanities Council is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through grant-making and public humanities programs, the Council serves as an advocate for lifelong learning and thoughtful dialogue about our shared human experience. The Council operates the North Carolina Center for the Book, an affiliate program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. To learn more visit www.nchumanities.org.
For John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities support inquiries, please contact Melanie Moore Richeson directly at mmoore@nchumanities.org.