SOUTHERN PINES — On Sunday, Oct. 12, at 2 p.m., four poets will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines.
Betty Adcock, Ronald H. Bayes, Jaki Shelton Green and Shelby Stephenson will join the 53 inductees currently enshrined.
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame celebrates and promotes the state’s rich literary heritage by commemorating its leading authors and encouraging the continued flourishing of great literature. Inductions are held every other year. A list of inductees, as well as samples of their work, can be found online at www.nclhof.org.
Largely self-educated, Adcock studied and wrote poetry through early marriage, motherhood and more than a decade in the business world. After her first book was published, she held a teaching residency for a semester at Duke University. Other residencies followed, culminating in an ongoing position as Writer-in-Residence at Meredith College in Raleigh, where she taught until 2006 and twice held the Mary Lynch Johnson Professorship. She is the author of six poetry collections and the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the North Carolina Medal for Literature, among many other honors and awards.
Bayes is the Writer-in-Residence and Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Emeritus at St. Andrews University in Laurinburg. His collection, “Greatest Hits 1960-2002,” was published by Pudding House Publications in 2003, following “Chainsong for the Muse.” His poetry has appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Crucible, Northwest Review, Oyster Boy Review, Pembroke Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Prism International, Solo and TriQuarterly.
Green is a writer and activist. She received the N.C. Award for Poetry in 2003. She has published four books of poetry “Dead on Arrival,” “Conjure Blues,” “singing a tree into dance” and “Breath of the Song: New and Selected Poems.” Her works have been choreographed and performed by many dance companies. She is a lifelong human services advocate who has worked in legal services and is an advocate for women, children and the mentally ill. She has used poetry and art as a healing and empowerment tool for disenfranchised populations such as the homeless, the newly literate and incarcerated women. She was the 2009 Piedmont Laureate, and lives in Mebane.
Stephenson has published many collections of poems, plus the poetic documentary “Plankhouse.” She is former editor of Pembroke Magazine. “His Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl” won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize. Stephenson’s latest collection, “The Hunger of Freedom,” is from Red Dashboard. Her website is Shelbystephenson.com.
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame was founded in 1996, under the leadership of poet laureate Sam Ragan, and is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Since 2008, the Network and the Weymouth Center collaborate with the North Carolina Center for the Book, the North Carolina Humanities Council, and the North Carolina Collection of the Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill to produce the induction ceremony and to promote the NCLHOF and North Carolina’s literary heritage.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.