LUMBERTON — Abbi Overfelt, a former staff writer for The Robesonian, has won an award from the North Carolina Press Association for an article she wrote while working for The Robesonian.
Overfelt, who is now the editor of The Red Springs Citizen and The St. Pauls Review, received first place in the News Feature category for newspapers with a circulation of 12,500 to 35,000 for a story titled ‘Eugenics survivor remembers: You won’t have ‘bread eaters.’
The story, published eight months ago, was on Virginia Brooks, a Maxton woman who was sterilized in a Lumberton hospital as a teenager. The story came on the heels of news that the North Carolina Senate had blocked a House measure to provide compensation for the 146 verified victims of the state’s sterilization program. More recently, compensation was included in the budget of Gov. Pat McCrory.
“This award means more to me than any I have received thus far,” Overfelt said. “I feel that it is the culmination of all the efforts of the first stage of my professional career.”
The North Carolina Press Association officially announced award winners on its website following a ceremony Thursday night in Chapel Hill.
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