Graham Greene
Congratulations are due to Professor Joyce Stavick, who many festival goers will know. Joyce, who recently retired from her post at the University of North Georgia and, sadly, as editor of the academic journal Graham Greene Studies, has been handed a rare honour. The University has created a scholarship in her name. This will enable a University of North Georgia student committed to studying Graham Greene through work on the journal Graham Greene Studies, to receive a scholarship each semester to support her/his work. As far as Joyce is aware, there are no similar endowments in the university’s English Department or in the wider College of Arts and Letters. 
Those who attended the 2016 Graham Greene International Festival will recall that Professor Stavick brought with her a contingent from the University of North Georgia which included the Dean Professor Chris Jespersen and students Lori and Scott Biddulph who both contributed interesting papers on Greene.(Pictured left to right: Dean Chris Jespersen, Scott and Lori Biddulph, Professor Joyce Stavick)
This scholarship has been made possible through the generosity of individuals associated with the University and we hope that in the future many students will benefit as a consequence. But it is through Joyce’s initiative and hard work that the transatlantic link has been established between the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust and this American university. It was her determination that an academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to Greene’s work should be established and published by her University Press. This has been accomplished, the inaugural edition has been widely read on the internet and Joyce has been able to hand over her duties as editor to her trusted North Georgia colleague Professor Donna Gessell.
(The ‘featured image’ for this post shows Quentin Falk and his wife with Joyce Stavick at the Dahlonega Campus of the University of North Georgia. Quentin was about to start a semester as visiting lecturer at UNG. The University Press of North Georgia published the 4th edition of Quentin Falk’s seminal work on the films associated with Greene, Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene in 2014.)