Hearty congratulations to multiple UNC Press authors who have recently been honored by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for their outstanding work in North Carolina history and culture.

Anna Hayes was awarded the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction for Without Precedent: The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp. The award is given yearly by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, which is part of the NCDCR.

The same association presented Bland Simpson with the 2009 R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for Significant Contributions to the Literature of North Carolina at a ceremony last month in New Bern. UNC Press has proudly published several books by Simpson, including Into the Sound Country: A Carolinian’s Coastal Plain and, most recently, The Inner Islands: A Carolinian’s Sound Country Chronicle (originally published in 2006, with a paperback edition forthcoming in March 2010). Both of those books also feature striking photography by Ann Cary Simpson, Bland’s wife.