Anna Wooten-Hawkins Graduate Award Fund

The following biography was written at the time of this scholarship establishment; some information may not be up to date:

Anna Wooten-Hawkins was a poet and a professor emerita of English at St. Mary’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina. She started her undergraduate career on a theatre scholarship but soon discovered her love of the written word, earning both her bachelor’s degree (1970) and MFA (1976) in creative writing at UNCG. She met her husband, Tom Hawkins, in a seminar on Victorian prose. He describes her as unlike “anyone else in life, history or fiction; she was simply a remarkable being.” Anna died in September 2000, at age 52, after a valiant three-year struggle with ovarian cancer.

During her 25 years of teaching at St Mary’s, Anna founded and directed Muse Week, a literary reading series which brought nationally renowned poets and fiction writers to the college for readings that were open to students and the public. Anna was one of the first recipients of the Raleigh Fine Arts Award, which honored her for her accomplishments in writing and teaching. Her poetry and criticism appeared in literary magazines, including “The Southern Poetry Review,” “American Poetry Review,” and “The Journal of Contemporary Literary Criticism.”

Friends, family, and former classmates remember Anna for her warmth, humor, charm, and intelligence. One classmate and close friend explained, “Anna typified the independent and self-realized women of the student body in those days and the academic spirit of the University today. I felt this was the perfect tribute to her and a wonderful way to help graduate students in writing at UNCG and into the future. Anna would love this.”