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Alumnae Accomplishments

> Read about alumnae accomplishments in Hollins magazine

	The Raleigh News & Observer has named Betsy Bennett '65 "Tar Heel of the Year" for her work as director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. "In two decades, [she] has managed to bag dinosaurs, lure scientists, sell lawmakers and inspire captains of industry to build a museum that captures the imagination of 700,000 visitors each year." Bennett was a recipient of Hollins' Distinguished Alumnae Award in 2010.
	Annie Dillard '67, MA '68 was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania by Governor Tom Corbett on October 19, 2011. A widely recognized scholar and author, Dillard received the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the New York Press Club Award for Innocence in the Galapagos, and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for An American Childhood. Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania began in 1948 as a way to honor women who have shown distinguished service through a professional career and/or voluntary service.
	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. > Read more
	Sally Mann '74, M.A. '75 was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, From Lens to Photo: Sally Mann Captures Her Love, calling her "one of the most influential photographers of her time." Mann presented the 2011 Massey Lectures in American Civilization at Harvard University in May 2011.
	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.
	President Obama has appointed Pamela J.H. Slutz '70 as Ambassador to the Republic of Burundi. Read more from the White House press release. Slutz is a career member of the Foreign Service, and was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia. She has also served as Deputy Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, chief of the political section in Jakarta, director of the Office of Regional and Security Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and deputy director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. Earlier in her career, she was a political officer in Shanghai, Jakarta and Kinshasa, and served in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs and as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Nuclear and Space Talks with the USSR. Slutz received Hollins' Distinguished Alumnae Award on Oct. 19, 2010.
	The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that The Nature Conservancy's Mobile Bay Oyster Reef Restoration project will receive support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to create jobs and restore coastal habitats in south Mobile County, Alabama. Mary Austill Lott '00 is Coastal Programs Director at the Nature Conservancy of Alabama, and leads the restoration project. "The immediate impact of this funding will be the creation of 35 to 40 new jobs, primarily construction jobs, in Bayou La Batre," said Lott. "These jobs will make it possible to enhance fisheries - and, in turn, local communities - that have been hard hit by Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, as well as by drought and economic strife."
	Valer Clark Austin ’62 was featured in an online video at Washingtonpost.com about her environmental work on the U.S.-Mexico border. At Reunion 2007, Austin shared photos and stories of her inspiring work on preserving and restoring the biodiversity of the borderland region between the United States and Mexico, and a story on her work was in the summer 2007 HOLLINS magazine.
	Nicole Harrell '96 is the recipient of the 2009 Walter E. Hoffman Community Service Award from the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association. The award is presented to a young member of the association for outstanding service to the community. Harrell has two dogs that are certified through Therapy Dogs International. The dogs work for a program called PAWS for Reading that she helped start at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, where first- and second-grade children read aloud to the dogs to improve the children’s skills and self-confidence. As the pro bono coordinator for Kaufman & Canoles, Harrell coordinates training sessions for attorneys to take protective order cases for victims of violence. She is hoping to work with the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association and with the Young Lawyers Division of the Virginia Bar Association to expand the program to Hampton Roads.
	Ruth Foster '03 has had her senior honors thesis for the International Studies major translated into Arabic and published by the Cadmus Press in Damascus. The journey from thesis to publication began in 2002 when she went to Egypt during January Term to work on an archaeological project in Thebes, directed by John Darnell, Professor of Egyptology at Yale. During her time there, she became quite interested in the issue of the treatment of animals in Egypt and did field work in Luxor, Cairo, and a small village near Thebes. She then wrote her thesis, titled "The Treatment of Animals in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times." A few years later, by chance, Simon Samoeil, the curator librarian of the Near East collection at Yale, heard about Foster’s thesis. He encouraged her to submit it to a publisher in the Arab/Islamic world for possible translation into Arabic, believing her findings and conclusions would be of great interest to readers of Arabic. Cadmus Press is one of the major publishers of scholarly Arabic books.
	Beth Macy M.A. '93 has been named one of 24 fellows by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She will spend the 2009-2010 academic year at Harvard University. During her fellowship, Macy will be able to take classes, attend seminars, and participate in other special events. Macy has been a reporter at The Roanoke Times since 1989. Her work on immigrant communities has won national awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and inclusion in The Best Newspaper Writing, 2007-2008 Edition. She has taught journalism at Hollins and written freelance articles for Salon.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Christian Science Monitor. She has covered the families beat for the past two and a half years of her 20-year career at The Roanoke Times and intends to continue the work she started with last year’s award-winning “Age of Uncertainty” series, which detailed the impact of the aging population and the crisis in long-term care. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University has awarded mid-career fellowships to more than 1,300 journalist from 89 countries since 1938. It is the oldest such program for journalists in the world.
	In an interview on WRAL.com (N.C.) in March 2009, Sadie Tillery '05 spoke on behalf of this year's Full Frame Documentary, to be held in April in Durham, North Carolina. Tillery is director of programming for the festival, now in its twelfth year. This year's theme, "This Sporting Life," attracted 1,200 submissions, of which 100 were accepted for the festival.
	The short story, "Magic Words" written by Jill McCorkle M.A. '81, has been chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2009 and also has been selected for New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2009. It was also chosen as one of the top five stories of the Best of the Net in 2008. "Magic Words" is from her new story collection, Going Away Shoes.
	In February 2009, Jamilyn Cole '00 left North Carolina for Uganda, where she will be living for the next 6-12 months working for the UNITE project of the North Carolina Zoo, as a conservation education trainer. Jamilyn is living in the small village of Bigodi, Uganda which is on the perimeter of Kibale National Forest. She provides training and materials to teachers in eight schools that boarder the National Forest, to aid them in the development of environmental and conservation curricula and activities. You can follow Jamilyn's adventures on her blog.