Former Poets Laureate 'Outraged and Deeply Disappointed'

Martha Waggoner of the AP reports that North Carolina's four former poets laureate have requested a meeting with Gov. Pat McCrory. Earlier today, the four -- Fred Chappell, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Cathy Smith Bowers and Joseph Bathanti -- issued a statement about their outrage:

"As former poets laureate of North Carolina, we remain outraged and deeply disappointed by the circumvention of the established process in place for a number of years to appoint the North Carolina  Poet Laureate, a cherished, time-honored, and crucial position in service to the citizens of the state. Instituted and administered expertly and transparently by the North Carolina Arts Council -- which has our unqualified support and loyalty -- the process insured that the poet laureate, ultimately appointed by the governor, was indeed a poet and educator of singular accomplishment, someone not only with a literary reputation in North Carolina, but beyond. The fact that that process was not recognized in the most recent appointment has resulted in disaster.

"Consequently, we stand at a crucial juncture in time for the literature and the writers of North Carolina -- not just its poets, but all of its writers, regardless of genre -- and, in truth, for literature and writers everywhere.

"Thus, we are dedicated to emerging from this crisis preserved and united as a state-wide community of writers, restoring the prestige and integrity of the Laureateship, and still enjoying our indisputable stature as one of the greatest states for writers and writing in this country."

Fred Chappell
Kathryn Stripling Byer
Cathy Smith Bowers
Joseph Bathanti

Queens Instructor Cathy Smith Bowers Wins Award for Poetry Collection

Cathy Smith Bowers

"The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers" (Press 53) has been named the SIBA winner in poetry for 2014. Selected by a jury of Southern independent booksellers, the award is presented each year to the best book in its category.

Bowers, a native of Lancaster, S.C., and a former N.C. poet laureate, lives in Tryon.
Fred Chappell of Greensboro, another former N.C. poet laureate, says of Bowers's poems:  "Hardship, cruelty, heartbreak, bleak sorrow -- these sad themes are plentiful in the pages of Cathy Smith Bowers. But in its smoldering heart, her poetry holds, like the pinata in 'The Party,' 'a sweet, dark center.' "

Bowers is an instructor in Queens University's low-residency MFA program. She is at work on a novel.

Others winners are Sarah Dessen of Chapel Hill in the young adult category for "The Moon and More" (Viking). Self-described as an "author, mother, worrier," Dessen is the author of ten young adult novels, among them the bestselling "What Happened to Goodbye."

In the novel category, the winner is "Whistling Past the Graveyard" (Simon & Schuster), by Susan Crandall of Indiana. A coming-of-age novel, set in Mississippi in the early 1960s, "Whistling" is Crandall's ninth novel.

John Currence's "Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey: Recipes from my Three Favorite Food Groups and Then Some" (Andrews McMeel) is the winner in the cooking category. Currence owns City Grocery Restaurant Group in Oxford, Miss., and the new book is also up for a James Beard Award.

In non-fiction, the winner is "Five Days At Memorial: Life and Death in Storm-Ravaged Hospital" (Crown) by Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter Sheri Fink. Fink is a physician who reconstructs the five days after Hurricane Katrina struck, when the floodwaters rose, the power failed and the heat climbed.

"The Girl from Felony Bay" (Walden Pond Books) by J.E. Thompson of Charleston, is the children's book winner. Thompson grew up reading the Hardy Boys books and worked for 25 years as an investment banker before turning to writing. (He says his daughter is his best critic.) "The Girl" is a fast-paced mystery for middle-schoolers, set on the coast of South Carolina.