(1941 – 2014) Vance served for decades on the faculty of the University of Kentucky and received the university’s alumni association’s Great Teacher Award. She published two full-length collections of poetry, a chapbook, and a short history of her hometown of Athens, Kentucky. Her work appeared widely in journals, literary magazines, and reviews. In 2007 she was appointed the state’s poet laureate,…

When Votypka took a last-minute internship at the local ABC television network affiliate instead of the month-long medical internship her father had set up for her, the die was cast. Hooked on television and armed with a communication studies degree, she headed to New York and her first real job as a page at CBS doing “whatever needed to be done.” From The Evening News with Dan Rather she worked up the ladder to 60 Minutes,…

Vowell earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She moved to Texas, where she worked on environmental issues and eventually earned a master’s degree in that field from the University of Texas at Dallas. She returned to Alabama in 1980. Her lengthy résumé includes serving as a founding member of the Freshwater Land Trust and of the Women’s Fund,…