Sheila Kay Adams has received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sheila Kay Adams, the popular mountain ballad singer from Marshall, is a winner of the National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Only nine of the fellowship awards were presented this year to folk and traditional artists for their “artistic excellence and efforts to conserve America’s culture for future generations.” The award includes a $25,000 prize.
Adams is a seventh-generation descendant of mountain singers and storytellers who has preserved ballads and stories that came to Western North Carolina from the early settlers.
See Sheila’s announcement.
See the complete listing of 2013 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipients.