A hearty congratulations to author, professor, and NCWN member Philip Gerard, recipient of the 2012 Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award, presented by St. Andrews University in Laurinburg. From the Wilmington Star-News:
Established in 1981, the Ragan Fine Arts Award honors the memory of Sam Ragan (1915-1996), a poet, longtime editor of the Raleigh News & Observer and the Southern Pines Pilot and North Carolina’s first secretary of cultural resources. (He also worked for the old Wilmington Morning Star and Sunday Star-News back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Past recipients include Wilmington author Clyde Edgerton, the poet and novelist Fred Chappell, Tom Wicker, Jerry Bledsoe, the editor and literary historian Louis D. Rubin Jr., the poets Jaki Shelton Green, Lenard Moore, and Ruth Moose, jounalist Dannye Romine Powell, and newscaster and Wilmington native David Brinkley.
Gerard is the author of several novels and essay collections. His newest essay collection, The Patron Saint of Dreams, will be released in March, 2012 by Hub City Press. He has served on the Board of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and helps facilitate the annual Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition through the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.