North Carolina Humanities Council
Announces 2007 Annual Caldwell Laureate

Emily Herring Wilson receives State’s Top Humanities Award

October 19, 2007

The board of the North Carolina Humanities Council announced Emily Herring Wilson as the 2007John Tyler Caldwell Laureate, the state’s top humanities award on October 19 at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem.  Following the award presentation, the Caldwell Lecture in the Humanities was presented by Tom Lambeth, former director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. Valeria Lee, of the Golden Leaf Foundation, then conducted an informal conversation with Wilson.  Music was provided by the roots duo called Polecat Creek will perform.

“We are honored to acknowledge Emily Wilson’s life with the Caldwell Award, “ notes NC Humanities Board Chair Dr. Lynn Jones Ennis.  “She is a living testament to the humanities in North Carolina and across the country.”

A native of Columbus, Georgia, Emily Herring Wilson has lived in North Carolina for more than forty years. As a student at Woman's College in Greensboro (present-day UNCG), she pursued both campus politics and poetry with equal vigor. After graduate school at Wake Forest, Wilson married a Wake Forest teacher, and together they raised three children in the faculty neighborhood.  Mentored by the North Carolina Humanities Council, she sought to broaden her landscape beyond the academy as writer, lecturer, organizer, and advocate.

In the 1960s, Wilson published poetry and taught creative writing in North Carolina's Poetry-in-the-Schools program and in community colleges. In the 1980s she focused on women's lives, and awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she wrote Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South, with photographs by Susan Mullally. This book became the prototype for her life's work, involving travel, interviews, collaboration, and public programs.

Among Wilson's publications are Memories of New Bern, with interviews by local citizens and funded by NCHC; For the People of North Carolina, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation at Half-Century; and North Carolina Women: Making History, co-authored with principal scholar Margaret Supplee Smith for the state's women's history project at the Museum of History.  In homage to the South's best garden writer, Elizabeth Lawrence, Wilson edited  letters (Two Gardeners/Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence: A Friendship in Letters) and wrote the first Lawrence biography, No One Gardens Alone. In 2001 St. Andrews Press published Wilson's chapbook, To Fly without Hurry.

“Emily reads the metaphors of stones and grasses and tells the stories of history’s unattended lives,” comments Shelley Crisp, NC Humanities Council Executive Director. “She’s just as likely to ask what the humanities have done to address war and hunger, what they have to do with your own life in the here and now,” she added.

Wilson has been active with People for the American Way, the Advisory Panel of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the NC Writers Network, Friends of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, and St. Anne's Episcopal Church. Wilson, a member of the Caroliniana Society, Phi Beta Kappa and a Fellow of the MacDowell Colony, has taught at Wake Forest and Cornell University. In 2006 she received the North Carolina Award for Literature.

Wilson acknowledges that working with others to create programs on North Carolina women and the poetry of A. R. Ammons as her most satisfying volunteer achievements. (Wilson’s article about A.R. Ammons, A Poet in Hatteras Village, appears in the October 2007 issue of Our State Magazine.)

She is a grandmother and a gardener.

About the Caldwell Award

Begun in 1990, the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities is recognized as the state’s most prestigious public humanities award. It recognizes an individual whose life and work strengthens the educational, cultural, and civic life of North Carolina and helps raise the fundamental questions of meaning in ways that are accessible and imaginative. The Caldwell Award is the only honor given in the state that expressly recognizes the value of an understanding and appreciation of the humanities in everyday and public life. The Humanities Council named the award for the late Dr. John Tyler Caldwell, former chancellor of North Carolina State University from 1959-1975 and one of five founding members of the Humanities Council.

Past Caldwell Laureates are Dr. Benjamin Eagles Fountain Jr., 2006; Louis D. Rubin Jr. 2005; Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans 2004; Wilma Dykeman† and Hugh Morton† 2003; Reynolds Price 2002; Houston Gwynne (H.G.) Jones 2001; Thomas J. Lassiter Jr.† 2000; William C. Friday 1999; Dorothy Spruill Redford 1998; Charles Bishop Kuralt† 1997; William W. Finlator†  1996; John Marsden Ehle 1995; Anne Firor Scott 1994; Samuel Talmadge Ragan† 1993; Doris Waugh Betts 1992; John Hope Franklin 1991; and Dr. John Tyler Caldlwell 1990†. († deceased)

The North Carolina Humanities Council is a 38-year-old nonprofit foundation dedicated to the humanities and a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Humanities Council’s mission is to help people come together with other North Carolinians to explore the state’s history, identity, and culture. Last year, the Humanities Council sponsored more than 300 programs in 80 of the state’s 100 counties.

Backgrounds

Tom Lambeth

Noted for his leadership in politics, philanthropy, and service, Tom Lambeth is a UNC graduate and native of Clayton, North Carolina. After helping elect Terry Sanford as  governor in 1960, Lambeth worked as one of the youngest principle advisors to a governor in the nation. After serving on Congressman Richardson Preyer’s staff, Lambeth campaigned in North Carolina for the balanced budget amendment and gubernatorial succession. In 1978, Lambeth became Executive Director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Lambeth continues to serve North Carolina as chair of the NC Rural Center and as a member of the NC Community Colleges Foundation, the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership, the UNC School of Social Work, and the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Valeria Lee

Early LIFE experiences encouraged Valeria Lee to look for ways to build community for all citizens and sparked her passion for social and justice issues. Lee grew up on a small farm in Halifax County and later moved with her husband to live and work in Turkey.  There, Lee’s experiences helped forge her mission to strive for equal opportunity for all people. 

Lee began her career in the public school system, working to effect racial integration and later, to advance the Headstart Education Project. She founded and managed a National Public Radio affiliate, WVSP-FM, where she produced radio programs that discussed rural and community social equality issues for over 12 years. 

As a program officer for the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, she focused on funding that targeted women, minorities and rural communities. Lee currently serves as director of the Golden Leaf Foundation, which manages an annual investment of $82 million to ease North Carolina’s transition away from a tobacco-based economy.

Polecat Creek

Kari Sickenberger and Laurelyn Dossett started writing their own songs in the 1990s and eventually formed the roots duo known as Polecat Creek. Winners of the neo-traditional contest at the 2006 Appalachian String Band Festival, Polecat Creek has featured many fine musicians over the years and now includes Riley Baugus and Natalya Weinstein. Their most recent CD, Ordinary Seasons was released earlier this year. Critically acclaimed prior releases include Leaving Eden in 2004 and Salt Sea Bound in 2002.