The University welcomed a beloved author of books for younger readers into the Wake Forest Writers Hall of Fame on Feb. 21 during a daylong celebration of writers, writing and remembrance.
WordsAwake5! featured panels of Wake Forest literati discussing the current state of publishing, case studies on the challenges of reporting contemporary political and cultural life, and how two noted Southern writers conceive of how they write about “community.”
The finale was the induction of Laura Malone Elliott (’79), known to her fans as L.M. Elliott, into the Wake Forest Writers Hall of Fame. Marybeth Sutton Wallace (’86), who coordinates the Wake Forest Fellows program, provided her introduction, reprinted here:
Much like we might imagine one of her own characters, Laura (L.M.) Elliott was out shoveling snow and tending to animals on the farm when the fateful call came through that she had received the 2024 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction for “Bea and the New Deal Horse,” the best historical young adult fiction in the nation. Ever down to earth, ever humble, Laura nearly dropped the phone in that recognition of 25 years of writing superb young adult fiction, 25 years of inspiring and educating, of giving us another world — whether that be the backdrop of Renaissance Florence, upstate New York in the American Revolution, the Manassas Battlefield, the French Alps in Resistance, the divided city of Berlin, or a farm in Virginia in the Great Depression.
“If you know how to research and report and to think in cross-disciplinary ways, i.e., how to learn about any new topic — which, thank you, Wake Forest, is precisely what I learned here — you can walk many unexpected, deeply rewarding journeys.”
Laura Malone Elliott (’79), WordsAwake5!
It seems altogether fitting that in my last conversation with our beloved professor and provost emeritus, Ed Wilson, we talked about Laura Elliott, his prize pupil, and how she’d just won the Scott O’Dell Award and what a difference her decades of writing — both historical fiction and investigative journalism — have made for so many.
Though Laura and I took many of the same classes as English majors at Wake Forest and had many of the same storied professors, we just missed each other as undergraduates: I came to know her, rather, as the favorite author of my daughter Catherine when Catherine was in sixth grade in Rocky Mount. (At a time when my middle schooler did not like school, she would sometimes escape to the library to seek out Laura’s books, which provided her a passport to escape for a while into a curriculum all her own.)
I had not yet connected the dots to realize that L.M. Elliott the author was the same Laura Elliott who had written for the Washingtonian and served on our College Board of Visitors. It was only in moving back to Winston and meeting Laura at a Bookmarks event more than 20 years ago that it all came together. For my young daughters, Laura the author became their heroine as she produced one intriguing and enthralling book after another. But Laura’s books are more than award-winning historical fiction: They are books about humanity, books in which the human spirit soars. Not only does the reader learn something about a period of history they may not know much about (and it’s very important to Laura that they do), but they learn something about the human spirit and its creativity and resilience in the face of tremendous challenges.
A native of Fairfax County, Virginia, Laura received her B.A. from Wake Forest in English in 1979 (with unofficial minors in journalism and in music — she was field conductor of the marching band, playing both flute and piccolo). I should note that Dean Tom Mullen, whom we’ve just recognized, was one of her esteemed history professors. (Tom Phillips ’74, MA ’78, P ’06, who organizes WordsAwake!, recognized the longtime dean of the college and 1995 Medallion of Merit recipient for “his wisdom, his grace, firmness of character, stewardship of all that is good at Wake Forest University. … a great friend, too, and supporter of Wake Forest Writers and WordsAwake.”)
It was being admitted into the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, thanks to Dean Mullen, which allowed Laura to take upper level history courses as an underclassman and fostered her cross-cultural liberal arts thinking, crucial to being a good writer! Laura began her journalism career right here as an Old Gold & Black reporter (like many of us), later obtaining her master’s in journalism from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, before embarking on a longtime award-winning career as a senior writer at the Washingtonian in DC, reporting on women’s issues, the performing arts and health.
She fully planned to return to the magazine after writing her first young adult novel (inspired by an article she’d written about her father’s WWII experience) but remained in the genre after witnessing “the power of stringently researched narrative to totally immerse readers in the human realities of living through history — the gut-wrenching emotional odysseys, the seismic personal and moral challenges forced on ordinary people by cataclysmic events, political crises or dogmatic leaders. (What felt like a very Pro Humanitate calling!)” Today, Laura has published 14 novels as well as a collection of beautiful picture books with a raccoon named Hunter, inspired by her own children, Megan and Peter, who continue to enrich her writing as adults and creative artists in their own right. (And I am happy to say that Peter, also an author and a teacher, is with us today.)
Some years ago Laura spoke to a Wake Forest audience about what makes a writer. She said, “I learned to tell stories through the eyes and heart and sweat of an individual caught up in tumultuous events in Dr. Wilson’s class. People who had trouble thrust at them and responded with a heroism they didn’t know they had. Through the poets he taught and the example he set with his own bearing and quintessentially democratic attitude, Dr. Wilson taught us about the nobility of the common man. The dignity and wisdom, the honor born of effort, the tenacity of the human spirit, particularly those whose hands were torn and dirtied by working the good, green earth. I also trust that the greatest truths often come from the mouths of youth, after all ‘the child is father of the man,’ as Dr. Wilson taught.”
At the same time, Laura does not shy away from hard topics and explores themes around the search for truth and the battle for intellectual freedom in her award-winning docudramas “Suspect Red” (her McCarthyism book) and “Walls” (set in 1961 Berlin, exploring the Cold War propaganda), and she recently finished up work on another political history novel, “Truth, Lies, and the Questions in Between,” set in 1973, the year of the Watergate hearings and the battle to ratify the ERA, exploring the dangers of disinformation, polarization and censorship. What could be more relevant? An ardent champion for free speech, for opening up our hearts to others different from ourselves, Laura has been faithful and devoted in her mission to educate and has sought out opportunities to share her books across our country. When she leaves us, she heads to San Antonio, Texas, for a “LibraryPalooza,” followed by three school visits. That’s a normal week for Laura.
Through characters like Henry Forrester, a young pilot shot down in World War II and aided by the French Resistance in her “Under A War Torn Sky” trilogy; whip-smart wicked wit Peggy Schulyer from “Hamilton & Peggy: A Revolutionary Friendship,” and fierce Florentine feminist Ginevra of “Da Vinci’s Tiger,” Laura has given us a rich tapestry of people to admire.
Laura herself is a Wake Forest heroine; there is no finer way that she could honor her favorite teacher, Ed Wilson, than through the extraordinary books which she has written in that beautiful lyrical voice that make prose pure poetry and that make reading a delight. For teaching us to better understand our history and to better understand the human heart, we honor Laura today as we induct her into the Wake Forest Writers Hall of Fame, alongside many of her beloved teachers, mentors, and friends: Ed and Emily Wilson, Bynum Shaw, Mike Riley and Maria Henson, to name a few.
Laura is a shining example of what a Wake Forest liberal arts degree can give to the world: Her words are that beacon of hope and enlightenment that can indeed bring about change. In the words of Bea, who finds hope in the face of catastrophe in “Bea and the New Deal Horse,” they are “a Milky Way of fireflies lighting up a nighttime forest … to hold up against dark days.” Today, Laura Elliott joins that pantheon of Wake Forest writers for lighting up that nighttime forest for all of us.
You can read more about Elliott in this earlier Wake Forest Magazine feature. Learn more about WordsAwake5! And the Wake Forest Writers Hall of Fame here.
