Alumnae Relations
Hollins University
P.O. Box 9629
Roanoke, VA 24020-1629

Natasha Trethewey, a graduate of Hollins University’s master of arts program in English and creative writing, has been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent collection of poetry, Native Guard.
    Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, Mississippi, studied at Hollins in 1990 and 1991 and is now an associate professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta. Native Guard, published last year by Houghton Mifflin, blends Trethewey’s reflections on growing up as the daughter of a biracial couple in the Deep South with largely-forgotten Southern history dating back to the Civil War. The Washington Post’s Book World said in its review, “Though this is her third book, Trethewey...may have only scratched the surface of her remarkable talent.”
    Trethewey’s previous honors include the inaugural Cave Canem poetry prize in 1999; a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize; and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her previous collections of poetry include Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000) and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002). She has also been published in the American Poetry Review, the Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and other literary journals.
    Trethewey’s father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet and professor of English at Hollins.

Balli Jaswal '04, has been named the youngest recipient ever of the David T.K. Wong Fellowship. The annual award, worth 26,000 pounds (approximately $53,600), enables a fiction author who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year in the United Kingdom developing their work at the University of East Anglia.
    Jaswal is writing a novel tentatively titled When Amit Returns, which focuses on the unraveling of an Indian immigrant family when their youngest daughter goes missing. 
    Born in Singapore, where her novel takes place, Jaswal grew up in Japan, Russia, and the Philippines. She studied creative writing at Hollins and subsequently at George Mason University. Her short stories and poems have been published in Singapore and the United States.

Crystal Clusiau ’07 gave a workshop on women and outdoor leadership at the February 2008 National Conference on Outdoor Leadership, sponsored by the Wilderness Education Association.     "I was inspired by my education at Hollins, my personal experiences, and the disappointment I had when there wasn’t a similar topic addressed at the previous year’s conference," she said. "I discussed issues such as gender boundaries and roles, gendered language, sexist behavior, and sexual harassment with a very interactive group of outdoor leaders and students. The presentation really provoked a lot of thought for both myself and the group members, and that makes me hope that it has increased an awareness of women's issues in the outdoors."

Jane Gentry Vance ’63, professor of English at the University of Kentucky, has been named Kentucky Poet Laureate for the 2007-2008 term. As Poet Laureate, Vance will promote the arts and lead the state in literary endeavors, including Kentucky Writers’ Day which is celebrated on April 24th of each year, to honor the birth date of Kentucky author Robert Penn Warren, the nation’s first Poet Laureate.

In 2007 Hollins presented the Distinguished Alumnae Award to bestselling novelist Lee Smith ’67, editor and publisher Shannon Ravenel ’60, attorney and Thoroughbred racing enthusiast Stella Ferguson Thayer ’62, and writer Annie Dillard ’67.
     Smith has published 11 novels and three collections of short stories over the past 40 years. Her 2001 novel The Last Girls, based on a Mississippi River journey she took as a Hollins student, was a New York Times bestseller, a “Good Morning America” Book Club selection, and co-winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. On Agate Hill, her latest book, spans life in the South from Reconstruction through the Roaring Twenties and has received wide acclaim.
     Ravenel has been called “the patron saint of Southern literature” due to her mentorship of talented Southern writers. She inaugurated the New Stories from the South series and went on to co-found Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, where she nurtured young writers who could not otherwise get a foot in the publishing door. In 2001, she started her own Algonquin imprint, Shannon Ravenel Books.
    Thayer is a prominent attorney, civic leader, and philanthropist. She is also a lifelong Thoroughbred horse enthusiast who has brought her expertise to bear as President of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York, and as co-owner of Tampa Bay Downs racetrack. She served as a Hollins Trustee for six years and has many relatives who are also alumnae.
    Dillard has said “I attribute everything I learned about writing to Hollins.” As a student she began writing what would become her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She received her M.A. at Hollins as well, and taught in the English department. She is professor emeritus of Wesleyan University and has served as scholar-in-residence at Western Washington University. Her newest work, The Maytrees, is a short novel of lifelong love in marriage, set on Cape Cod.
    Dillard has also been named one of four finalists for the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She was recognized for her second novel and eleventh book overall, The Maytrees, published by HarperCollins. Founded in 1980, the PEN/Faulkner Award is the largest peer-juried prize for fiction in the United States. Dillard will be honored during the 28^th annual PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony on May 10 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Camille Agricola Bowman ’75 is the architectural historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Newport News. “I have arrived in a state where everyone in my field is famous,” she told the Virginian Pilot. “I consider it a privilege to work here where it all started.”