Tuesday, October 28, 2003

By: Kenneth Luck, PR Intern

WILMINGTON, NC – In celebration of the State Fair’s 150th anniversary, University of North Carolina at Wilmington Professor Emeritus of History Melton A. McLaurin has written The North Carolina State Fair: The First 150 Years. The campus bookstore will host a book signing with McLaurin from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29 at UNCW’s Burney Center.

With an annual attendance of 700,000 visitors, the North Carolina State Fair is the state’s largest event and is the largest 10-day agricultural fair in the country. To mark the 150 year milestone, the N.C. Office of Archives and History and the State Fair Division of the Department of Agriculture have jointly published a history of the annual autumn event.

McLaurin’s book, The North Carolina State Fair: The First 150 Years, is illustrated with over 300 color and black-and-white pictures selected by Paul Blankinship. The new hardcover book is the most comprehensive account ever published of the people, politics and events that have shaped the North Carolina State Fair. Each chapter provides insight into a different aspect of the state fair over the years since its founding in 1853. The book delves into the fair’s structure, the fair as carnival, its social aspects and agricultural and industrial promotion. The 236 page, clothbound and illustrated book sells for $25.

Melton A. McLaurin, the author of seven books and numerous articles on the American South, is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he taught for 25 years. A native North Carolinian, he received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from East Carolina University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina.

Paul Blankinship grew up in Brevard, N.C. In 1971, he moved to Raleigh, where he earned an M.S. degree in oceanography from N. C. State University. He has conducted years of research and assembled a variety of materials on the history of the state fair, which have been exhibited at the fair each year since 1992.

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For more information contact UNCW Bookstore Manager Andy Shaffer at 910/962-7187.