Our spotlight on Western North Carolina’s movers and shakers.

Know an amazing Western North Carolina woman who deserves to be recognized? Send us a note and tell us about her award or achievement.

UNC-Asheville classics professor Lora Holland was tapped by the National Endowment for the Humanities to attend a seminar in Rome this summer. Fifteen professors nationwide were chosen for the program, which focuses on “Identity and Self-Representation in the Subcultures of Ancient Rome”—basically, shedding new light on the ordinary people of ancient societies, Holland says. “These are the women, children, middle-class and lower-class people, all of whom were not leading players in the government,” she says. Holland got her doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill. She was born in central Texas and has lived in Asheville since 2002.

Asheville screenwriter Jennifer MacDonald, a producer and casting director, co-wrote a film that won the Spirit of Independence award in the dramatic category at the 2008 Sundance Festival in January for Anywhere, USA, (formerly known as Asheville: the Movie), written with her husband, director Chusy Haney-Jardine. MacDonald plans to make more films with her husband and will tackle some solo pieces

Joye Haynes-Ganger, founder of Whitley Home Medical in Henderson County, was presented The Francine M. Delany Award for Service to the Community in March at the UNC-Asheville Alumni Awards Ceremony. Haynes-Ganger, with the help of the Whitley Home team, accepts donated used home medical equipment, repairs or refurbishes it and then gives it to those in need.

Kathryn Stripling Byer of Cullowhee was named North Carolina’s first woman Poet Laureate in 2005, and last year she received the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers at its annual conference in Chattanooga. This year, she’ll serve as featured poet for the program On the Same Poem, which means everyone in North Carolina’s Forsyth County will be encouraged to read her poem Mountain Time.

Renee Peoples, a fourth grade teacher at West Elementary in Swain County, recently won the 2008-2009 Western Region North Carolina Teacher of the Year. Peoples has always been a teacher, starting as a teenager at a child care center, and then teaching first grade. Setting a strong example is important to her, and last year she lost 75 pounds.

Paige Johnson, the President and CEO of The Health Adventure in Asheville, won the 17th annual YWCA Tribute to Women of Influence (TWIN) 2008 Honoree of the Year award in March. Johnson started at the Health Adventure in September 2003 as the Vice President of Marketing and Development and was appointed President and CEO in May 2006.

YouTube viewers around the world rated a video of Heather Maloy’s dance performances as part of the first phase of Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s 21st Century Choreography Competition. Maloy, Artistic Director for Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, won the contest’s first phase and had a new work, Hurricane, performed by the Colorado Dance Company in April. Terpsicorps dancers will perform Hurricane at the Diana Wortham Theatre in Asheville on August 7-9 as part of the Terpsicorps season, which opens in June.

Clara Curtis, the design director at the North Carolina Arboretum, won the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 2008 Citizen Award. The award is for a professional in the field who enriches both the land and the community. Curtis has been working at the arboretum for approximately 20 years.