2016 CWBN Career Advancement Scholarship Luncheon

About our Guest Speaker


Lee Mims, Author & Artist

Like almost everyone I know, I started life as an infant. Though a skinny, wrinkled runt, my parents took me home anyway and raised me on their farm in Raleigh, North Carolina. As soon as I could walk, my two older brothers dragged me everywhere they went. We played outdoors from dawn to dusk, building forts, drinking water from garden hoses and running with sticks. Until the obvious physical changes forced me, I was convinced I was their bony, somewhat weaker brother.

I mention the weakness because, in truth, I was a sickly kid, stricken with constant bouts of croup. It was during these times of illness, while staying home with my mother, that I learned the beauty of words. I look back on the tedium of confinement under a croup tent as being magical instead of boring all because my mom read to me. She read endlessly: short stories, poems, fairy tales and adventure novels.

By the time I went to college, I’d left illness behind, but not my love of books. I also held on to my desire to be in the great outdoors so when I went back to college the second time—the first didn’t take—I decided to build a career around it.  Read more ...