{"id":3645,"date":"2023-03-07T16:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=3645"},"modified":"2023-03-07T16:00:29","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T21:00:29","slug":"six-women-whove-shaped-the-history-of-charlottes-community-of-readers-and-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2023\/03\/07\/six-women-whove-shaped-the-history-of-charlottes-community-of-readers-and-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Women Who\u2019ve Shaped the History of Charlotte\u2019s Community of Readers and Writers<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Given that March is Women\u2019s History Month, now is an especially apropos time to celebrate the many women who have shaped the history of Charlotte\u2019s community of readers and writers. \u00a0For the purposes of this blog post, I have selected six such women.\u00a0 Not all of their names are widely known today, but each of them made a lasting contribution to our community.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mary Rebecca Denny<\/strong> was the founding chair of the English Department at UNC Charlotte.\u00a0 In 1946, Bonnie Cone hired Mary Denny as the first full-time faculty member at what was then called the Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina.\u00a0 Denny had been an English professor at Queens College (now called Queens University), but she decided to leave her position at Queens College and join forces with Bonnie Cone.\u00a0 When the Charlotte Center evolved into Charlotte College in 1949, she stayed on and created the English Department.\u00a0 From 1949 until 1964, she served as the chair of Charlotte College\u2019s English Department.\u00a0 Shortly after Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Denny retired, becoming UNC Charlotte\u2019s first professor emerita.\u00a0 During her time as the chair of the English Department, she founded the college newspaper and a college literary magazine.\u00a0The Denny Building at UNC Charlotte is named in her honor.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mary T. Harper<\/strong> played a major role in introducing African American literature to the students at UNC Charlotte and to the larger Charlotte community.  When Dr. Harper joined the university in 1971, she was the first full-time Black faculty member in UNC Charlotte\u2019s English Department.  She played a pivotal role in creating and teaching the first African American literature classes in the department.  In addition to her work at UNC Charlotte, she co-founded (with Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey) the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Afro-American Cultural Center in 1974.  This center is now known as the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture.  In her work with this center, she arranged for community programs and presentations on African American writers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Irene Blair Honeycutt<\/strong> taught creative writing during her long tenure as a faculty member at Central Piedmont Community College.\u00a0 In 1993, she founded CPCC\u2019s Spring Literary Festival and served as the director of this festival for fourteen years. This festival expanded into CPCC\u2019s Sensoria Festival, a celebration of literature and the arts. Upon her retirement in 2006, CPCC established the Irene Blair Honeycutt Lifetime Achievement Award.\u00a0 \u00a0Besides teaching and doing community engagement work, she published four poetry collections, the most recent of which is Beneath the Bamboo Sky, <\/em>which came out in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Adelia Kimball<\/strong> founded the Charlotte Writers Club (CWC) on June 6, 1922, and served as the club\u2019s first president.\u00a0 She continued to lead the club until 1930 when she moved to New York City to work as an editor for the publisher Louis Carrier & Company.\u00a0 During her tenure as CWC\u2019s president, she organized and ran the club meetings, arranged for speakers, and helped found the club\u2019s initial writing contest.\u00a0 Now, more than 100 years after its founding, the Charlotte Writers Club is still going strong.\u00a0 In recognition of her contributions to the history of the club, the club established the Adelia Kimball Founders Award for \u201cextraordinary service to the CWC and the greater writing community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dannye Romine Powell<\/strong> made her debut on the Charlotte literary scene in 1975 when she became the book editor for The Charlotte Observer.\u00a0 <\/em>She remained the paper\u2019s book editor until 1992.\u00a0 Back in those days, the paper published a two-page book section every Sunday.\u00a0 It included original book reviews, interviews with authors, and news about local literary events. In her role as book editor, she often interviewed Southern authors.\u00a0 She decided to collect these interviews in a book titled Parting the Curtains:\u00a0 Interviews with Southern Writers<\/em>, which came out in 1995.\u00a0 In addition to her interview book, she has published five poetry collections, two of which have won the North Carolina Poetry Society\u2019s Brockman-Campbell Award for best book by a North Carolina poet.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Allegra Westbrooks<\/strong> was an important figure in the history of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. When she moved to Charlotte in 1947 to manage the Brevard Street Library branch of the public library, the library system was still segregated.\u00a0 The Brevard Street Library was one of only two branches that served African Americans at the time.\u00a0 After the library system desegregated in 1956, she moved to the Main Library where she ran the acquisitions operation before being promoted to Supervisor of Branches in 1957, making her the first African American to hold the position of supervisor in the library.\u00a0 During her career with the library, she played a major role in developing the library\u2019s outreach programs and expanding the library\u2019s branch system. \u00a0She collaborated with community groups to make books available to children who did not live near branches, and she started a bookmobile program to bring books to residents throughout the county.\u00a0In recognition of her many contributions, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees renamed the Beatties Ford Regional Library in her honor.\u00a0 In April 2020, this branch became known as the Allegra Westbrooks Regional Library.
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Each of these six women made lasting contributions to Charlotte\u2019s community of readers and writers.\u00a0 Storied Charlotte is a better and more vibrant place because of the work and leadership of Mary Rebecca Denny, Mary T. Harper, Irene Blair Honeycutt, Adelia Kimball, Dannye Romine Powell, and Allegra Westbrooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given that March is Women\u2019s History Month, now is an especially apropos time to celebrate the many women who have shaped the history of Charlotte\u2019s community of readers and writers. \u00a0For the purposes of this blog post, I have selected six such women.\u00a0 Not all of their names are widely known today, but each of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3645"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3658,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions\/3658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}