Amelia Island Book Festival presents Carolyn Curry, Ph.D. A compelling speaker with a spell-binding story

CarolynCurry
Carolyn Curry

January 27, 2015 6:30 a.m.

Amelia Island Book Festival
Media Release
Marie Fenn 904.647.4221, or
Debra Craig 904.624.1665

The Amelia Island Book Festival is proud to present award winning author and a champion of women, Carolyn Curry, Ph.D., as the featured speaker for this year’s annual VyStar Readers Luncheon, Saturday, February 21, 2015 at the Fernandina Beach Woman’s Club.

Curry’s masterfully researched and written book, Suffer and Grow Strong: The Life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas (1834-1907), is a remarkable biography that reads like a novel. It tells the story of the indomitable Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas. Culled from Thomas’ many diaries and scrapbooks, a virtual treasure trove of Southern history, it is one woman’s sixty-year journey from a childhood of luxury, through the Civil War and Reconstruction in Georgia, and into the 20th Century. Her courage and resilience during and after the Civil War will remind you of Scarlett O’Hara.

Through her meticulously kept diaries, the world finds that neither reversal of fortune, nor the death of four of her ten children, and devastating family strife ever deter Thomas from striving to find ways to improve her family’s dire economic straits and re-establish a home after the war.

Thomas’ steel-willed determination to triumph over wartime dislocations and postwar deprivations, her intellect and devotion and, later, her passionate support of women’s rights is an elegant contribution to Southern women’s history. Recently, the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council presented Curry’s book the Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archive.

Curry’s presentations about Thomas have been lauded as “beautiful, inspiring, and compelling.” In November 2014, Curry was the featured speaker at the annual fundraiser for the Signal Mountain Library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Karin Glendenning, librarian, said of her, “Both you, Carolyn, and Gertrude, will always be remembered here on Signal Mountain.” Curry’s presentation last fall at the Georgia Humanities Council and Foundation Board of Carnegie Library in Newnan, GA, was equally captivating. Audiences appreciate her knowledge, compassion and inspiring style.

Compelled by women’s stories shared with her during years of research and teaching, Curry founded Women Alone Together in 2002 in Atlanta, a 510(c}(3) non-profit foundation that addresses the special needs of women. Supported through grants and other contributions and partnering with Agnes Scott College Alumnae Association, the foundation works to build confidence and community among the growing number of women who are alone in our culture whether by divorce, death of a spouse, estrangement, or choice. Since then, she has led the organization to become the dynamic, viable entity it is today.

In addition to a distinguished career as an educator, teaching at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, and the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, she was appointed by the governor to the Kentucky Heritage Council. She also served on the Board of Trustees for Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, as well as on the Advisory Council For Action Ministries of the United Methodist Church. In 2011, she received the Georgia State University Distinguished Alumni Community Service Award and in 2014, she received the Agnes Scott College Distinguished Alumna Award – Service to Community.

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Bill Curry

Curry’s husband, Bill Curry, will introduce her at the VyStar Readers Luncheon, which starts at 11:30 am at the Woman’s Club. An author and speaker in his own right, Curry is the former head football coach at Georgia Tec, the University of Alabama, the University of Kentucky, and Georgia State University. He was an ESPN Football Analyst for eleven years.

For more details about this or other festival events slated for February 19 – 21, 2015, or to buy tickets on line, go to www.ameliaislandbookfestival.org

The Amelia Island Book Festival is a not for profit 501c3
whose mission is to support literacy throughout the community and to organize, manage, and produce annual book festival events for all citizens of Nassau County.