Hilary DuBose ’05 will never forget the sight that greeted her when she walked outside the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in August 2011. “There was this giant tent camp of people,” she recalls, who had been displaced following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation on January 12, 2010. “Thousands and thousands of tents were set up in an open public space. To see so many people still living in camps, a year and a half after the earthquake, was really shocking.” DuBose came to Haiti to help direct post-earthquake relief projects for Catholic Relief Services, the latest chapter in a career distinguished by humanitarian and social justice initiatives, both domestically and abroad. Read more

More than 50 alumnae returned to campus October 4, 2012, for Hollins' first ever C3: Career Connection Conference. Alumnae shared advice and their personal stories with students on getting that first job, internships, resumes, graduate school, and networking.

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Hollins graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey M.A. '91 has been named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2012-13 by the Library of Congress.

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• Hollins Theatre takes Trethewey's play to Kennedy Center

"But for me Hollins was Mt. Parnassus, not only because it’s an idyllic campus in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but also because the Muses were everywhere, some of them in tweeds and smoking pipes, others steeped in defiance to easy answers, all of them devoted to liberating arts." Enjoy this article by Guneli Gun Hershiser '62, who came to Hollins from Turkey thanks to Gail Wood George ’55.

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Elizabeth Vann Hobbs '58 received the Anne D. Johnston Award from the Junior League of Pittsburgh. Johnston was also a Hollins alumna of the class of 1960. Hobbs has moved more than 20 times in her 54 years of marriage and with each move made an impact on her new community.

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"Who WAS that man 'Wyndham Robertson'?" We are delighted to share these remarks from that member of the class of '58, who has been captured on canvas by Annette Polan '67, in this portrait which now hangs in the library. 

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"In painting, we're dictators," she says, unapologetically. "It's not about compromise. It's about truth, though." Hollins alumna Mary Page Evans '59 has a retrospective of her Impressionism-inspired art at the Delaware Art Museum through July 15.

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ABC News White House Correspondent Ann Compton '69 has been inducted into the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association's Hall of Fame. Her internship as a Hollins student started her on her career path.

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Compton is one of eight women honored at the Library of Virginia at a celebration March 28, 2013, for having had a significant impact on the history of Virginia. She was named to the "Virginia Women in History" for breaking new ground as the first woman White House correspondent for a national news organization.

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Dr. Lorraine Lange MALS '74, who earned her master's degree at Hollins and is a former adjunct professor here, was named one of four finalists for the 2012 National Superintendent of the Year Program by the American Association of School Administrators. Lange, superintendent of Roanoke County Public Schools, was named Virginia Superintendent of the Year in May of 2011.

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Jane Parke Batten '58 received Old Dominion University's Hugo Owens Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award. The first non-African American to win the award, Batten was recognized for her long record of community involvement and service on behalf of the disadvantaged. ODU President John Broderick lauded the selection of Batten for the MLK award, noting that “her family has been influential on many levels. She and her family have played a key role in championing the rights of minorities in this community and beyond.” Read more

Danielle "Dani" Vellines Startt ’98 proved that being a self-taught baker is no impediment when it comes to professional cake decoration. She was the grand-prize winner in Ace of Cakes' Duff Goldman's "Show Your Duff" online cake contest.

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Two prestigious awards, one amazing storyteller: Lee Smith ’67 received the University of North Carolina's 2010 Thomas Wolfe Prize on Oct. 7, and the Library of Virginia's 2010 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award on Oct. 16. Established in 1999, the Thomas Wolfe Prize recognizes contemporary writers with distinguished bodies of work. The Department of English bestows this prize each fall, around the time of Wolfe's October 3 birthday. In addition to receiving an honorarium and the Thomas Wolfe Prize medal, the honored writer comes to campus as the University's guest and delivers a lecture. The Library of Virginia's Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to Smith for a “life’s work [that] exemplifies the very best of Virginia’s literary tradition.” Smith is the author of twelve novels, including Oral History and Fair and Tender Ladies, plus three collections of short stories. Her novel The Last Girls, based on a Mississippi River journey she took as a Hollins student, was a New York Times bestseller as well as a winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A retired professor of English at North Carolina State University, Smith received an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. Her newest collection, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger, was published in 2010.

Margaret S. "Tog" Newman '58 received the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor the state bestows, on Oct. 7, 2010. Governor Beverly Perdue and N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle made the presentations at the N. C. Museum of History. Newman has made a life of public service in the areas of arts and culture, with hands-on leadership at cultural, civic, and community organizations across the state and nation. She currently serves as the chair of the statewide board of directors of the N.C. Center for Nonprofits. Newman chaired the N.C. Arts Council in 1993-2005 and continues to serve on the board as trustee emeritus. She is also past president and a board member of the Southern Arts Federation, a regional organization working in partnership with the state arts agencies of nine southeastern states. Newman has served as president of the board of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, based in Washington, D.C., on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, as the founding president of the Association of Symphony Orchestras of North Carolina; as a board member of the N.C. Conference for Women, and as a board member of the N.C. Center for International Understanding.  On the local level, she has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Winston-Salem State University, as a member of the City of Arts and Medicine Advisory Board, and as a member of the Forsyth County Health Planning Council, among many others.

Mallory Potock '09 is coordinating producer on a documentary film with Citizen Pictures called Race Across the Sky 2010. It tells the story of the most challenging mountain bike race in North America - the Leadville 100 - and both the professional riders and "average Joes" who take part in it. This year's film is a sequel to the film documenting the 2009 race, which Lance Armstrong won. Potock worked with the director and executive producer, as well as the story producer and the rest of the 40 person crew, to coordinate and execute the filming of this rocky mountain race. Citizen Pictures posted the trailer for the film at www.raceacrossthesky.com. The film will premiere in nearly 500 theaters nationwide this November.

Liana Camper-Barry '09 (who writes under the name Liana Quill) is the latest Hollins alumna to earn a prestigious writing award. Camper-Barry has been named a winner of the first Mississippi Review Poetry Series contest. Her poetry collection, Fifty Poems, is one of three books selected for publication in January 2010. She competed against poets from across the country for the award, which also includes a $1,000 cash prize. "I am so happy for Liana I am beside myself, and this is a big honor for our undergraduate creative writing program as well," said Professor of English R.H.W. Dillard. "She is certainly the youngest Hollins alumna to have a 'real' book published since possibly Anna Sevier in 1963 and Lee Smith in 1968." Dillard added that Camper-Barry will also have a selection of 15 poems from the book published in the next issue of Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts, for which he is writing an introduction. The Mississippi Review Poetry Series contest was judged by award-winning poet Dara Wier, who has authored 11 books of poetry and directs the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.