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Academics: Hobson Lecture & Prize

The annual Mary Frances Hobson Lecture and Prize The annual Mary Frances Hobson Lecture and Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters brings the college and surrounding community together each spring to celebrate the accomplishments of an author of note from the region.

Initiated in 1995 by the Hobson Family Foundation of San Francisco, the award serves as a memorial to Mary Frances Hobson (1912-1993), a journalist and poet, who was the first woman to receive the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in journalism from the University of North Carolina.

Mrs. Hobson and her family have always treasured deep ties to the university and community. An aunt, Miss Lois Vann Wynn, a 1905 Chowan graduate, served on the faculty from 1905-1908, and for five generations the family has been connected to the Murfreesboro area.

Each year the university and community look forward to the events surrounding the conferral of the award. These events begin with a luncheon, held at the President's Home, to honor the writer, and to meet and mingle with the writer and Hobson family. Following the luncheon, the writer meets informally with students. The activities of the evening include the conferral dinner, lecture, and a book signing. During the conferral dinner, Charles Hobson, President of the Hobson Family Foundation, presents the recipient with a medallion that is inscribed with a likeness of Mary Frances Hobson on one side and historic McDowell Columns Building on the other.

Mr. Hobson also presents a monetary gift. Following the dinner, the recipient presents a lecture in Vaughan Auditorium. After a question and answer session, an outstanding English student and member of the Chowan University Alpha Zeta Rho charter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, presents a token of appreciation from the student body. The evening concludes with an informal reception in the lobby of Marks Hall. At that time books are available for purchase and signing.

Chowan University Awards 2010 Hobson Prize to Writer Lee Smith

A New York Times bestseller, Lee Smith received an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and recently had a musical adaption of one of her works, Good Ol’ Girls, air on UNC-TV.

Chowan University’s Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters is gifted each year by the Hobson Family Foundation as a memorial to Mary Francis Hobson, a journalist and poet, who was the first woman to receive the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in journalism from the University of North Carolina.

This year’s Hobson winner, Lee Smith, will be presented an official medallion and a monetary gift at a special banquet in her honor on Monday, April 7th, 2010. That same day, Smith will also present a lecture about her numerous current and upcoming works, including the collection of new and selected stories Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger to be published earlier that spring.

Since being born in the Appalachian coal mining town of Grundy, VA, Smith has written all her life, publishing eleven novels and three collections of short stories. Most of her recent works play upon the rich dialect of the Blue Ridge Mountains where she honed her craft by people-watching in her father’s dime store.

“I got hooked on stories early and as soon as I could write, I started writing them down,” said Smith in her autobiography on her website, www.leesmith.com. “I wrote my first novel on my mother’s stationary when I was eight.”

Smith’s writing career officially began in 1966 at Hollins College in Roanoke, VA where she was awarded a fellowship after submitting a coming-of-age novel to a Book of the Month Club contest. Two years later, that novel, The Last Days the Dog Bushes Bloomed, became her first published work of fiction.

Her second novel Something in the Wind in 1971 garnered generally favorable reviews, but her next novel Fancy Strut in 1973 was widely praised by critics as a comic masterpiece. Smith then surprised her readers with a much darker work, Black Mountain Breakdown, and then switched focus to her O. Henry Award-winning short stories, including Cakewalk in 1981.

Smith was thrust into the spotlight when her fifth novel Oral History became a Book of the Month Club featured selection in 1983. Smith again saw the glow of the national spotlight in 2002 when The Last Girls, inspired by an actual raft trip made down the Mississippi River with Hollins College friends in 1966, became a New York Times bestseller and a “Good Morning America” Book Club pick, as well as a winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

Smith has filled her life with many other works including Family Linens, dedicated to her husband journalist Hal Crowther in 1985; Fair and Tender Ladies in 1988; 1990’s Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, her second book of short stories; 1992’s The Devil’s Dream, a generational saga about a family of country musicians; and her ninth novel Saving Grace in 1995.

“Narrative is as necessary to me as breathing, as air,” explains Smith. “The writing itself is a source of strength for me.”

Smith’s most recent novel, On Agate Hill published in 2006, is a historical novel set in the piedmont region of North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Barbara Bates Smith has adapted this powerful work into a traveling one-woman, one-hour play with live music integrated throughout.

With such a distinguished career, Chowan University is very pleased to announce writer Lee Smith as the 16th winner of the annual Mary Frances Hobson Prize, to be officially conferred April 7th, 2010 on the Chowan campus following her Hobson Lecture.

For more information about author Lee Smith, visit her website at www.leesmith.com. For more information about Chowan University’s Hobson Prize and Lecture, contact Chowan University Provost Dr. Danny Moore at (252) 398-6211 or moored@chowan.edu.

Previously honored recipients are:
- Darnell Arnoult (2009)
- Judy Goldman (2008)
- Josephine Humphreys (2007)
- Michael Parker (2006)
- Shelia P. Moses (2005)
- Chuck Sullivan (2004)
- Sheri Reynolds (2003)
- Padgett Powell (2002)
- Allan Gurganus (2001)
- Amy Hempel (2000)
- G.D. Gearino (1999)
- Randall Kenan (1998)
- Jill McCorkle (1997)
- Mark Richard (1996)
- Kaye Gibbons (1995)