From staff reports

CHAPEL HILL -- Buoyed by a long list of lifelong achievements as an advocate for the public humanities across North Carolina, Marsha White Warren has been named recipient of the N.C. Humanities Council's highest honor, the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities.

She will accept the award at 7 p.m. on Oct. 16, at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill.

Reginald F. Hildebrand, associate professor of African American Studies & History at UNC, will deliver the annual Caldwell Lecture in the Humanities. Hildebrand is the author of "The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation," co-chairman of the N.C. Freedom Monument, and a N.C. Humanities Council board member.

"Just like John Caldwell, Marsha with boundless energy gets things done in the world in the service of humanistic ideals," said Laurence Avery, longtime president and current trustee of The Paul Green Foundation. "It seems like the Caldwell Award was created just for her. It will be a happy day in North Carolina when she receives it."

Author and 1992 Caldwell Laureate Doris Betts wrote that "in a South which has always valued history and past leaders, Marsha's work on many levels has been to bring the past forward, cast a light on it, make it speak to the present and the future."

A charter member of the North Carolina Writers' Network in 1985, Warren was the executive director from 1987 to 1996. She served as executive director of The Paul Green Foundation from 1991 to 2005 and is currently its literary executor. Warren sits on the boards of the N.C. Freedom Monument and the Weymouth Center for the Arts Humanities. With Sam Ragan, Warren developed the N.C. Literary Hall of Fame and currently serves on its administrative team.

Her past board service includes the National Coalition of Writers Organizations; N.C. Cultural Alliance; North Carolina Cultural Resources Task Force; Arts Advocates of North Carolina; North Carolina Poetry Society; N.C. Writers Conference; and the St. Andrews Press Editorial Board. In 1999, Warren received a Doctor of Humane Letters from St. Andrews Presbyterian College. With Emily Herring Wilson, Warren co-organized the N.C. Women Writers' Conference in 1992.

Warren is the recipient of numerous awards for her contributions to the arts and humanities. They include the Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts in North Carolina and the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for Lifetime Contributions to Literature from the N.C. Literary Historical Association. The N.C. Poetry Society honored Warren for her many contributions to the literary community. In 2006, the Society dedicated its annual anthology, Pinesong, to Warren, saying that "No one else we know of has achieved so much for so many with such grace and genuine love of people."

Under her leadership, the N.C. Writers' Network received the Governor's Business Award in the Arts and Humanities in 1992 from the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Warren was associate editor of North Carolina's "400 Years: Signs Along the Way;" consulting editor of "Weymouth: An Anthology of Poetry;" and editor of the "Collected Poems of Sam Reagan: Poet Laureate of North Carolina."