The Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award has released their short list, and it includes authors who will be familiar to members of NCWN.
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award is presented annually for printed works that focus special attention on Western North Carolina. This year’s finalists are:
- Robert Beatty, Willa of the Wood, a Serafina series thriller about an orphan in the Great Smoky Mountains set in 1900
- George Ellison and Janet McCue, Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography, about an early national park advocate
- David Joy for The Line That Held Us, set in Jackson County
- Meredith McCarroll, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race and Film, an examination of the region and depiction of residents in movies
- Terry Roberts, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival, a novel about a traveling preacher in the mountains during Prohibition
The finalists were chosen from twenty-one nominations. The winner will be announced at a banquet and awards ceremony on Friday, November 16, 4:00-6:00 pm, at the Asheville Renaissance Hotel.
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award was founded in 1955 when the WNC Historical Association and the Louis Lipinsky family of Asheville presented the first award to North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Wilma Dykeman for The French Broad.
Other winners include NC Literary Hall of Fame inductees John Ehle (Last One Home: A Novel, 1984), Kathryn Striping Byer (Wildwood Flower: Poems, 1992), Lee Smith (On Agate Hill, 2007), and Robert Morgan (The Road from Gap Creek, 2014); as well as NCWN trustee Tommy Hays (In the Family Way: A Novel, 1999).
The 2018 winner was Charles Frazier for Varina, his second Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award. He also won in 1997 for Cold Mountain.
For more information about The Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award, click here.