First Posted: 2/8/2012
LAURINBURG — St. Andrews University will present the Ethel Fortner and Sam Ragan arts awards during an event on Feb. 23.
The 2012 Ethel N. Fortner Writer and Community Award will be presented to former Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Lisbeth C. Evans.
Named by Gov. Easley to the post in 2001, Evans opened the new Museum of Albemarle in Elizabeth City and oversaw the $40 million expansion by the Museum of Art. She focused increased access to the arts through technology by digitization of archives and artifacts for online retrieval and study. She also launched the informational www.ncCulture.com podcasts.
Evans is a member of the Golden LEAF, Inc. Board of Directors, the Board of Trustees for Wake Forest University and the Board of Trustees at the North Carolina School of the Arts as well as numerous arts and historical organizations.
A native of Clarkton, N.C., she was educated in North Carolina’s public schools and graduated from Wake Forest University.
The 2012 Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award is being presented to Philip Gerard.
A man of many talents, Gerard has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous magazines, including the New England Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review. The Delaware native is the author of three novels: Hatteras Light, Cape Fear Rising and Desert Kill, and two books of nonfiction: Brilliant Passage and Creative Nonfiction – Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life.
He has written nine half-hour shows for Globe Watch, an international affairs program for PBS-affiliate WUNC-TV, Chapel Hill. He has scripted two hour-long environmental documentaries, one of which won a Silver Reel of Merit from the International Television Association in 1994. Two of his weekly radio essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
Gerard teaches in the BFA and MFA Programs of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. An avid musician,
For more information about the Writers’ Forum, creative writing at St. Andrews or the St. Andrews Press, call 910-277-5310 or email [email protected].