NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 1 - Fall 2001

Novelist Tony Earley spoke at the Friends of the Library's annual Spring Dinner on April 27, 2001. His third book Somehow Form a Family, a collection of personal essays published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, made its debut at the dinner. Earley's first novel, Jim the Boy, was published in 2000 to wide acclaim and received the Southeastern Booksellers Association's 2001 award for best in fiction. The Christian Science Monitor cited the book as its top choice for 2000.

Earley, a native of Rutherfordton, North Carolina, and a graduate of Warren Wilson College and the University of Alabama, is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University. His fiction and nonfiction stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, New York Times Book Review, Oxford American, Story, and Granta. In 1996 Granta named him to its "Best of Young American Novelists" list. The New Yorker also named him as one of its "twenty writers for the 21st century."

Lawrence Apple, president of the Board of Directors, served as emcee during the evening program. He announced the appointment of W. Trent Ragland III to the Friends' board. Ragland will fulfill a term left vacant by a resignation, and his term expires in 2004. He is a real estate developer and president and owner of Ragland Properties, Inc., in Raleigh.

Three other new board members announced at the dinner were Sue Daughtridge, Helen Evans, and James Fulghum III, all elected to five-year terms. Daughtridge, from Banner Elk, North Carolina, is the retired president of Salem Sales Associates and Lee Valve Company. She served as a director with the NC State Foundation from 1996 through 2000. Evans is an active community volunteer in Raleigh, having served a variety of organizations including Hospice of Scotland County, Junior League of Raleigh, Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood, and Scotland County Arts Council. Fulghum, also of Raleigh, is a neurosurgeon with Carolina Back Institute in Cary. He completed his residency at Duke University Medical Center, Division of Neurosurgery.

Apple thanked outgoing board members Robert Kennel and Alton Smith. He also mentioned the sad news of the recent death of the third outgoing member, Crane Jones.

Susan Nutter, vice provost and director of Libraries and secretary of the Friends' Board of Directors, welcomed eight new life members of the Friends of the Library. She also recognized eleven new endowments and twenty-three new incubator endowments established during the past year that support the NCSU Libraries.