University of Mount Olive Faculty Accolades

University of Mount Olive Professor and Poet David Rigsbee has received a Pushcart Prize for his poem “Russians,” published in his recent book, The Red Tower:  New and Selected Poems by NewSouth Books.   The poem will be published in The Pushcart Prize XXXVI:  Best of the Small Presses in 2012.  The Pushcart Prize – Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America.  In addition, Rigsbee is the author of The Pilot House, published in March by Black Lawrence Press and winner of the Black River Poetry Prize.

University of Mount Olive Assistant Professor of English Lenard D. Moore will be one of the presenters at the upcoming North Carolina Haiku Society 32nd Annual Haiku Holiday Conference.  Moore, the Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society, was Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for Eastern North Carolina from 2007 to 2009. He is a past President of the Haiku Society of America: the first Southerner and the first African American to be elected as President of the HSA. Lenard is the founder of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective (CAAWC). His latest collection of poems is A Temple Looming (WordTech Editions: 2008). Lenard will give some opening remarks and will lead one of the haiku workshops in the afternoon.

University of Mount Olive Assistant Professor of Organizational Development Vana Prewitt will mentor three international teams in the upcoming TED Think Tank Conference and Competition (www.ted.com), a think tank conference for the brightest thinkers in the world. According to Prewitt, the current challenge is to find a way to get FUN into MEANINGFUL activities. “The sky is the limit for submissions and the teams go through several steps,” Prewitt says. “The first step was to get an initial submission in by March 30. The judges returned with their list of semi-finalists two weeks later and all three of my teams made it to the semi-finals.”  For more information visit http://www.challengefuture.org/challenges/25.