Scholarship Winners

As part of WILMA’s Women to Watch Awards, WILMA provides scholarships to four local students every year to support their efforts in writing.

The winners were announced at the awards event in October.

Four students — two from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and two from Cape Fear Community College — receive $500. They’re nominated and selected by the officials with their school and writing programs.

Here are this year’s scholarship winners and their writing goals.

Shania Barney
UNCW
Barney is a UNCW junior from Charlotte, majoring in creative writing with a minor in business. She has an interest in writing creative nonfiction for young adults, sharing her passion for the genre while showing young readers that nonfiction can be fun and captivating. On-campus, Barney spends much of her time in the Upperman African American Cultural Center.

Valentina Giambra
CFCC
Starting at a very young age, Giambra found writing to be her “go-to.” Originally born in Turin, Italy, she and her family moved to the States, finally ending up in Wilmington. Throughout those transitional times, she found refuge in poetry and books that followed her into adulthood, Books are her passion. She has returned to CFCC to study communications and writing, hoping to further her career and earn her associate’s degree in the arts. Aside from school and working full-time, she loves traveling and spending time with friends and family, while staying active with her dog, Lucy. Giambra plans on continuing to use her personal life and travel experiences to create more poems and short stories.

Valora McRae
UNCW
McRae has been creating books since she was a toddler by taping paper together and writing stories with smelly markers. She will graduate from UNCW in May 2022 with a degree in creative writing, a minor in English, and a certificate in publishing.

Hollis Rose
CFCC
Rose moved back to her hometown of Wilmington after almost a decade of teaching scuba diving around the world. She has lived in Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Rarotonga, and even worked on a cruise ship sailing around the Caribbean. Trust her when she says that Wrightsville Beach is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. She enrolled at Cape Fear Community College in the fall of 2020 to take the first step towards a degree in marine biology. After her first English class, she unearthed her predilection for writing, pivoted, and is now pursuing an English degree. During her first sober vacation to Cozumel in December, she decided to start the blog Sober Travel Junkies. She hopes to show other people in recovery that traveling sober is not only possible but even more rewarding and fun.

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