Sponsoring talks, workshops, events and other activities that sustain the values
for which Wilma Dykeman stood:

--Environmental integrity

--Social justice

--The power of the written and spoken word.

Who is Wilma Dykeman?

Wilma Dykeman (1920 - 2006) was a writer, speaker, teacher, historian, & environmentalist.

She traveled and spoke widely, but she spent most of her life in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.

Among her many achievements in life, she:

-- made the first full-fledged economic argument against water pollution (seven years before Rachel Carson) in

her 1955 book The French Broad

-- won the Sidney Hillman Award for the best book of the year on social justice

-- wrote a novel (The Tall Woman) that has sold more than 200,000 copies

-- taught creative writing & Appalachian literature at the University of Tennessee for over 20 years

-- served on the boards of Berea College & the
University of North Carolina at Asheville

-- served as Tennessee State Historian for over 20 years