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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2024
ARTS ADVOCATE MARSHA WHITE WARREN RECEIVES 2023 NORTH CAROLINA AWARD FOR LITERATURE by Michele W. Walker Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry and consulting editor for Weymouth, an Anthology of Poetry. In 1991, and for the next thirty years, she directed the Paul Green Foundation, which makes grants to assist theaters, playwrights and social justice organizations around the state to uphold the ideals of the playwright and social activist Paul Green. In that capacity, she helped lead the foundation to establish what would later become North Carolina Freedom Park, a public space in downtown Raleigh designed to honor the African American struggle for freedom. This park will be visited by school children across the state in their study of North Carolina history, and with Paul Green Foundation funds, educational materials will be available to teachers as they guide their students. After two decades, North Carolina Freedom Park opened in August 2023.
MICHELE W. WALKER is a Public Information Officer for the North Carolina Department of Naturaal and Cultural Resources.
ABOVE Reid Wilson, Secretary of the Department of Natural and
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE NC DEPT. OF NATURAAL AND CULTURAL RESOURCES
For her efforts to build and enlarge North Carolina’s literary community, Marsha White Warren received the 2023 North Carolina Award for Literature from Governor Roy Cooper. Warren has spent most of her career using her gifts in service to other writers, as a charter member and executive director of the North Carolina Wr iter s’ Net work, an officer in the North Carolina Poetry Society, and board member of Arts Advocates. Born and raised in Ohio, Warren received a bachelor’s degree in education from Miami University in Oxford, Oh. She moved to North Carolina in 1961 when her husband, David, was accepted to Duke Law School, and took a job teaching first grade at George Watts Elementary School in Durham, passing on her love of reading and writing to her students. In 1987, Warren became executive director of the two-year old North Carolina Writers’ Network, traveling the state to build the Network, enlarge its membership, and pushing the organization to be more welcoming and inclusive to African American and Native American writers. During her tenure Warren helped to create a standard for excellence at the Network, expanding the annual Fall Conference, the Center for Business and Technical Writing, named creative writing competitions, and regional groups such as NCWN-West. She launched a writing program for prison inmates and created the Networks’ critique service for writers at all stages of development. As a result, the North Carolina Writers’ Network is known as the largest statewide writers’ organization in the country. Warren also served writers via editing The Collected Poems of Sam Ragan (St. Andrews Pressm 1990) and, with Ron Bayes, the anthology North Carolina’s 400 Years: Signs along the Way (Acorn Press, 1986). She was also the project director and head of the editorial board for the publication of Sally Buckner’s Word and
“ It’s meant a great deal to me to be in a f ield where I’m working with adults in arts administration, with writers, who are the most interesting people of all.” —Marsha White Warren
Warren’s dedication to the state’s literary community has earned her numerous awards, including the Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts in North Carolina, the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for Lifetime Contributions to Literature, the John Ty l e r C a l d w e l l L a u r e at e Aw a r d for Humanities and in 2018 she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. Warren and her husband David live in Chapel Hill. n
Cultural Resources; Marsha White Warren, 2023 North Carolina Award for Literature recipient; and Governor Roy Cooper