With over two million copies sold, cooks agree that the Best of the Best Series is the foremost authority on state and regional cooking.

The all-new edition of "Best of the Best from North Carolina Cookbook" (Quail Ridge Press, $16.95) is the latest addition to the Best of the Best State Cookbook Series.

Editors searched tirelessly for the most delectable dishes representative of North Carolina kitchens. Recipes have been tried, tested and assembled into one collection of North Carolina's absolute best culinary creations.

Among the cookbooks chosen for inclusion is "Cooking with the Sandhills Woman's Exchange," compiled by the volunteers of the Sandhills Woman's Exchange.

Take the journey from Asheville to Wilmington, as mouthwatering selections from North Carolina are gathered into one, ready-to-use resource.

"Best of the Best from North Carolina Cookbook" combines top recipes from more than 80 cookbooks native to the Tar Heel state, complete with history and little-known facts shared along the way.

With tantalizing dishes like Pecan-Crusted Trout, Barbecue Spareribs, Black-Eyed Pea Cakes with Fresh Salsa and sweet sensations such as Triple Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake; "Best of the Best from North Carolina Cookbook" is a fusion of the finest dishes North Carolina has to offer, complete with cook-friendly preparation tips.

Published by Quail Ridge Press, "Best of the Best from North Carolina Cookbook" editors Gwen McKee and Barbara Mosley selected 348 of the absolute best recipes from over 80 North Carolina cookbooks to create a concise representation of the state's most treasured fare.

In an effort to preserve America's food heritage, Gwen and Barbara offer at-home-chefs across the country the resource to re-create signature recipes from North Carolina in one convenient cookbook.

Quail Ridge Press editors Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley have an unerring eye for selecting genuinely delicious recipes that provide simply spectacular results. Gwen and Barbara have edited more than seventy-five best-selling cookbooks, including the Best of the Best State Cookbook Series. Having sold more than two million copies, this series is nationally recognized as the definitive source for state and regional cooking.

Native American Speaker

The American Indian Studies Department of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke will host an evening with Dr. Edward C. Valandra on Monday, Feb. 19, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Native American Resource Center in Old Main.

Valandra will read from his recently published book, "Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance to Termination, 1950-59" (University of Illinois Press, 2006), and he will discuss strategies of indigenous resistance and revitalization.

Set in the 1950s, the book documents the Lakota resistance to Public Law 83-280, passed by Congress, to end the authority of local Native American government. The book features a foreword by Vine Deloria Jr.

An enrolled Sicangu Lakota citizen from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Valandra is a professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He has degrees in chemistry and political science and a doctorate in American Studies from SUNY Buffalo.

Active in tribal governance and public law and policy, Valandra has been a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council (1985-89), the Rosebud Sioux Tribe's Constitutional Task Force, and is currently an Associate Fellow of the University of Nebraska's Center for Great Plains Studies and the interim president of the Indigenous Professors Association.

A book signing, with refreshments, will follow, and books will be available for purchase at the event.

For more information, contact Dr. Jane Haladay at 910-521-6485 or haladayj@uncp.edu.

Writing Contests

The N.C. Writers' Network will sponsor two writing contests for North Carolina residents. The Randall Jarrell Harperprints Poetry Chapbook Competition and the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, both named after beloved N.C. creative writing professors, have been great vehicles for aspiring writers to see their work published.

The Randall Jarrell chapbook winner receives possible publication, a reading and reception, plus $200.

The chapbook competition is open to any writer who is a legal resident of North Carolina and who has not published a full-length book of poems (48 pages or more). Questions may be directed to Joseph Bathanti of Appalachian State University via e-mail at bathantjr@app.state.edu.

The winner of the Doris Betts prize will be considered for publication in the North Carolina Literary Review, a well-established journal featuring poetry, fiction, and nonfiction about North Carolina's history and culture. The Doris Betts Fiction Prize awards the winning 2,500-word fiction manuscript with $200 and $100 to the first and second prize winners respectively, along with possible publication. Questions may be directed to Margaret Bauer of East Carolina University via e-mail at BauerM@mail.ecu.edu. The deadline is Feb. 15.

Linda Beatrice Brown, author of "Rainbow Roun Mah Shoulder," will be the final judge for the Doris Betts contest. Past professor at Guilford College and now distinguished professor of the humanities at Bennett College, her work has been compared to that of Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor.

For further guidelines to these contests, visit www.ncwriters.org.

The N.C. Writers' Network is a non-profit organization and one of the largest state-wide literary organizations in the country. The Network helps to connect, promote, and lead the state's writing community from being beginners to published professionals.

Fundraiser

The North Carolina Writers' Network is hosting a fundraiser brunch to honor writer Will Blythe and his family on Saturday, Feb. 10, at the Fearrington Barn, beginning at 10:30 a.m. In addition to serving as editor of Esquire Magazine, Blythe also earned renown for his book, "To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry."

The event additionally recognizes the other literary members of the Blythe family including Will's sister, Anne, and his grandfather, Literary Hall of Fame inductee, William LeGette Blythe.

The brunch is planned at the Fearrington Barn in Pittsboro, before the Carolina-Wake Forest basketball game, with traditional Southern cuisine by Mama Dip, a reading and book signing by Will Blythe, live Celtic music, and a cash bar.

Will's book is getting so much buzz, with the incredible title "To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever," ostensibly about the Carolina-Duke basketball rivalry, but really about so much more.

"It's hilarious, pensive, poignant, Southern, Northern, and altogether charming," says a spokesman.

Like the rest of us, Will worries about his sanity. He consults famous Columbia professor Robert Thurman and ruminates, "I had to know from the point of view of a renowned scholar and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism whether hatred of Duke might cause me to be unduly reincarnated, forced to spend billions of years as a praying mantis or a screech owl or a coyote baying at a coldhearted moonBaying seemed an especially apt fate."

"Duke fans will be welcome at this unique event," says the spokesman. "You may want to come just to defend yourselves."

Tickets to the event are $79, based on Will Blythe's graduation date from Carolina in 1979.

Proceeds go to help the N.C. Writers' Network continue its efforts to support and connect N.C. writers.

For details or to reserve tickets, call 919-967-9540.