ALEXSANDRA LETT

from Sanford, North Carolina

WHEN: April 10, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: Osterneck Auditorium

COST: FREE

After growing up across the road from her Grandpa’s country store on a large farm in rural North Carolina, AlexSandra Lett eagerly left home to seek fame and fortune. During her successful career in newspapers, magazines, television and public relations, AlexSandra longed for something more. Disillusioned with her materialistic lifestyle, she moved to a cabin in the woods. Seeking her unique voice as a writer, she created a nostalgia column, “Lett’s Set a Spell.”

It’s popularity led to the publication of:

• A Timeless Place: Lett's Set a Spell at the Country Store

• Timeless Moons: Seasons of the Fields and Matters of the Heart

• Timeless Recipes and Remedies: Country Cooking, Customs and Cures

• Coming Home to My Country Heart: Timeless Reflections on Work, Family, Health, and Spirit

In her latest release, Coming Home to My Country Heart, Lett explores the shift from her position as president of a communications company in the city to a writer living in the country and discovering her unique voice as an author. She returns to her home community, deals with the deaths of both of her parents, and begins to truly honor her deep roots.

HODDING CARTER, III

from Chapel Hill, North Carolina

ANNUAL FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY DINNER

WHEN: Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 6:30 pm

WHERE: Pine Crest Country Club

COST: Dinner Fee

Hodding Carter III graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. After two years in the United States Marine Corps, he returned to his boyhood home in Greenville, Mississippi, where he worked at the family newspaper, The Delta Democrat Times. While there, he won the National Professional Journalism Society’s award for editorial writing and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. He was a reporter, managing editor and associate publisher during his 17 years there.

Carter became actively engaged with racial and political reform efforts in Mississippi in the mid-1960’s. In 1968, he was co-chair of the bi-racial delegation that ousted the state’s white regular Democratic Party delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He worked in Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign in Washington in 1964 and Jimmy Carter’s campaign in Atlanta in 1976. Following Carter’s victory, he was named Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and State Department spokesman.

In 1980, he entered television news and public affairs television. Working as anchor, commentator, production company president and reporter over the next 14 years, he won four Emmys and the Edward R. Murrow Award. He appeared as a regular panelist on This Week with David Brinkley, was an op-ed columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and contributed to magazines and newspapers across the country. He has appeared on PBS, CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC.

Carter has written two books and contributed to nine others. In January 2006, he was appointed University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.