Local author Anne Jobe and editor Christine Reed will host a special reading at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 22, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. 

By Laura Lauffer

During the Thanksgiving season, we often recognize and appreciate the farmers in our community for the abundance of food on our tables. Three women farmers in the region shared their farming experience during this challenging year, what it means to them to farm as women and how they continued to grow and distribute their goods to the community in the challenging times of COVID.  

Lillian Exum Clement was a native of Black Mountain and the first female legislator in the Southeast. She was the fourth woman in North Carolina to pass the state bar exam and the first practicing female attorney without male partners. 

Now 75, Cashiers resident Ann Austin was just 3 years old when her grandmother died following a sudden cardiac episode.