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No One Gardens Alone:
 Author Emily Herring Wilson Explores
the Life of Local Gardening Legend Elizabeth Lawrence
On UNC-TV's North Carolina Bookwatch with DG Martin, Sunday, July 10, at 5 PM

Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) lived a singular, contradictory life. She was a true Southerner; a successful, independent gardening writer with her own newspaper column and numerous books to her credit; a dutiful daughter who cared for her elders and always lived with her mother; a landscape architect; an accomplished poet; a friend of literary figures like Eudora Welty and Joseph Mitchell; and a woman people called "St. Elizabeth" behind her back. Lawrence earned many fans during her lifetime and gained even more after her death with the reissue of many of her classic books.

When Emily Herring Wilson edited a collection of letters between Lawrence and famed New Yorker editor Katherine S. White, entitled Two Gardeners, she found legions of readers, in the South and elsewhere, who were eager to know more about the legendary Lawrence. Now, one hundred years after Lawrence's birth, Emily Herring Wilson's biography No One Gardens Alone captures all-sides of this renowned Southern gardening writer.

On Sunday, July 10, at 5 PM, Emily Herring Wilson joins host DG Martin for the next episode of UNC-TV's literary series North Carolina Bookwatch, sharing not only her fascinating stories about "St. Elizabeth," but also her own late-blooming fascination with the renowned local gardener.

"I actually was not a gardener, and, I am ashamed to say, didn't even know of Elizabeth Lawrence," admits Herring Wilson. "But, when I helped create a volume of North Carolina women's history.I then discovered that everyone knew of Elizabeth Lawrence and I wrote an essay about her-interviewing friends and reading her books. I was just hooked."

Like classic biographies of literary figures such as Emily Dickinson or Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Herring Wilson reveals Lawrence in all her complexity and establishes her, at last, as one of the premier gardeners and writers of the twentieth century.

"I was intrigued by [Elizabeth Lawrence]. I think there is a mystery about her because she lived a private life," says Herring Wilson. "She lived the life she wanted and never married.living a very productive life as a writer and a gardener. And I think I wanted that private life for myself and wanted to pay homage to a woman I thought had been slighted in history-not just Elizabeth Lawrence, but also women like her."

Emily Herring Wilson is author of numerous books, including North Carolina Women, and is the editor of Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence-A Friendship in Letters. She is also a scholar for the North Carolina Humanities Council, the recipient of numerous awards, and she has been a resident at The MacDowell Colony. She lives with her husband in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

During this season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: Shannon Ravenel (New Stories from the South, 2005), Randall Kenan (Walking On Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century), Ann B. Ross (Miss Julia's School of Beauty), Lawrence Earley (Looking for Longleaf), Peter Perret (A Well Tempered Mind: Using Music to Help Children Listen and Learn), Timothy Tyson (Blood Done Sign My Name), Moreton Neal (Remembering Bill Neal: Favorite Recipes from A Life in Cooking), Quinn Dalton (Bulletproof Girl), Henry Petroski (Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering), Bill Morris (Saltwater Cowboys), Amy Tiemann (Mojo Mom), Robert F. Irwin (Robert F. Irwin 40 Years), Tommy Hays (The Pleasure Was Mine), Mary Kay Andrews (Hissy Fit), Jerry Shinn (Loonis! Celebrating a Lyrical Life), Michael Parker (If You Want Me to Stay), Lawrence Naumoff (A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow), Martha Witt (Broken As Things Are) and Gerhard Weinberg (Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders).

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh's independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV's ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV's other local productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.

-UNC-TV-