Mary Norton Kratt

Mary Kratt, Writer-Poet
Author, Mary Kratt

Celebrating New South Women: Twentieth Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte, NC-The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and Levine Museum of the New South announce the publication of New South Women: Twentieth Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina by Mary Kratt. The arresting voices of the women themselves tell their stories. Using personal interviews, archives, and reports from books and newspapers, author Mary Kratt conveys an immediacy as lively as front-porch talk. White and black, poor and rich, these women saw needs and answered them. They became a political coalition, mentored others and experienced being the "first woman" in many fields. Whether seamstress, mill worker, teacher, athlete, novelist, humanitarian, or socialite, the women of the New South in Charlotte exhibited the amazing tenacity and ingenuity that has long characterized women's lives.

With candor, humor, and wisdom, these selected women, from the suffragists of 1914 to the CEOs in the year 2001, describe fascinating personal details of the evolution of women's status. They show how a few women made a vast difference in the life of the vibrant city of Charlotte, North Carolina during the twentieth century, an extraordinary era of invention and change. They became voters, courageous leaders, undaunted educators, creative philanthropists, and daring political and career professionals.

The book, published by PLCMC in association with John F. Blair Publisher is available at Charlotte's main library and its branches, Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte Museum of History, and Park Road Books. Paperback: $14.95 plus tax 264 pages. Black and white photos. Index. Biographical appendix ISBN 0-89587-250-1.

more about Mary Kratt...

Mary Kratt’s books of poetry include The Only Thing I Fear Is A Cow and a Drunken Man (Carolina Wren Press), a chapbook which won the Oscar Arnold Young Award, On The Steep Side (Briarpatch Press), Small Potatoes ( St. Andrews Press, 1999) and a recent chapbook, Valley, (Sow’s Ear Press, 2000). Her poems have appeared in SHENANDOAH, TAR RIVER POETRY, NEW VIRGINIA REVIEW, STONE COUNTRY, NEW MEXICO HUMANITIES REVIEW, GREENSBORO REVIEW, NIMROD, YANKEE, and others. Mary Kratt is a 1996 winner of a N.C. Arts Council Fellowship to MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Twice winner of the Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series sponsored by the N.C. Writers Network, she won the Fortner Writer-in-Community Award from St. Andrews College in 1994. Her book Small Potatoes won the Brockman/Campbell Poetry Book Award in 1999.She has sixteen published books of poetry, history, and biography, and served on the Speakers Bureau of the North Carolina Humanities Council, and as an associate editor of the Southern Poetry Review. Because of her books and essays on Charlotte history, she was hired to write two walking tours of Uptown Charlotte and has led regional day-trip history tours for teachers and residents for the Museum of the New South. She lives in Charlotte and taught part-time at UNC-Charlotte 1992-7.
Her books about Charlotte include: New South Women: Twentieth Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina, 2001; Charlotte: Spirit of the New South; Legacy: The Myers Park Story; and Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905-50, with Mary Manning Boyer
(UNC Press,2000).

Her B.A. from Agnes Scott College and M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are in English literature.