Laurette LePrevost Writers Symposium

CCC&TI Announces 37^th Annual Writers Symposium Featured Author and Events

Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute has announced the featured author and novel for the 37th annual Laurette LePrevost Writers Symposium. This year’s Symposium will feature author Adele Myers and will focus on her novel, The Tobacco Wives.

CCC&TI students enrolled in English classes during the spring semester will be reading and discussing Myers’ novel, The Tobacco Wives. The story is set in the fictional town of Bright Leaf, NC, the tobacco capital of the south and follows seamstress Maddie Sykes, who’s just arrived to the area where her aunt has a thriving sewing business.  After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes and the most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. 

Myers is a fourth-generation native of North Carolina and mined her own family history – including her grandmother’s experience as a private hairdresser for some of the richest women in tobacco country – to craft her debut novel that re-imagines, from a feminist angle, one of the largest corporate frauds of the twentieth century. Many details she incorporated in The Tobacco Wives come from family members who worked in the tobacco factories during that time, and she has done extensive research into how the Big Tobacco companies employed early deceptive marketing techniques to shape public perception. 

Myers grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and has a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has worked in public relations and advertising for more than 30 years, advising Fortune 500 clients including Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, American Express, and Scholastic. 

For more information, contact Katie Hoover, CCC&TI Instructor and Coordinator, Oral and Written Communication, at 828-726-2327 or kehoover@cccti.edu.

Schedule of Events

Monday, March 9: Craft Activity | Caldwell Campus LRC | 12pm
Led by Katie Hoover

Wednesday, March 11: Historical look at the time-period and setting of The Tobacco Wives | Watauga Campus W460-135 | 11am – 1pm Led by Jason Klamborowski

Thursday, March 12: Book Discussion | Watauga Campus Library | 11am
Led by Suzanne Shaut

Monday, March 16: Book Discussion | Caldwell Campus LRC | 12pm – 1pm
Led by Katie Hoover and Matt Williams

Thursday, March 19: Adele Myers will speak on Caldwell Campus in the Gymnasium | 1pm

Adele Myers