The Friends of Given Memorial Library and Tufts Archives announce that author Joanna Catherine Scott will be the speaker for the annual Literary Luncheon.

The luncheon will be held at the Pinehurst Member's Club Saturday, March 28, at 12:15 p.m., with doors opening at 11:30.

Joanna Catherine Scott is a North Carolina resident whose most recent book, "The Road from Chapel Hill," was named a SIBA/Book Sense Southern Literary Best Seller. Scott's "stand-alone sequel," "Child of the South," will debut April 3.

Joanna Catherine Scott's own story reads like an exciting novel. Born during an air raid over London, she was raised in Australia by her mother, a former stage and radio actress who later became a Pentecostal preacher, exorcist and healer.

Scott attended college in Adelaide, Australia, married and had three children. She later divorced and moved to Perth, where she met a visiting doctoral student from Duke who convinced her that "Duke was better than Oxford," and she followed him to North Carolina.

Scott became a White House-appointed special assistant for the National Emergency Preparedness Office and went to live in Manila when her husband was appointed ambassador to the Asian Development Bank.

Inspired by an official visit to the Philippine Refugee Processing during the time of the Peoples Power Revolution and the demise of the Marcos regime, she began recording and writing down refugee stories for the next two years.

The Center housed 17,000 "souls who had fled Communist persecution in their homelands." This experience and her love for sharing stories resulted in her first book: "Indochina's Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam."

Ever since, Scott has been writing award-winning books, based on true stories that have been shaped by difficult times in history.

Tickets can be purchased at The Given Library, The Given Book Shop and The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines.

All profits will go in support of the only library and archives in the state that rely totally on private donations by patrons and supporters, Given Memorial Library and Tufts Archives.