Huntington native Carter Taylor Seaton is an award-winning author, ceramic sculptor and community advocate for the arts who has served on the Mayor’s Council for the Arts since its inception. She is the author of four novels, four non-fiction works including “Hippie Homesteaders,” and numerous magazine articles, essays and short stories.
Her commissioned sculptures include busts of Gov. William Cabell, Collis P. Huntington and Nate Ruffin. All are displayed locally.
In her earlier life, she directed Appalachian Craftsmen Inc., a rural craft cooperative and was nominated for the Ladies Home Journal’s “Women of the Year 1975” award for her role in that organization. She ran three marathons — Atlanta, New York City, and Marine Corps — and became a certified scuba diver after she was 50. From 1985-95, she worked in Georgia as a marketing professional in the hospitality industry, returning to Huntington to become the marketing director for Goodwill Industries of KYOWVA Inc. She retired in 2013.
She holds a Tamarack Foundation Fellowship Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts and the West Virginia Library Association honored her with the 2014 WVLA Literary Merit Award. In 2015, Marshall University’s College of Liberal Arts honored her with an Award of Distinction. In 2016, Seaton received the Governors’ Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. The Herald-Dispatch presented her with its Community Award for the Arts in 2018. The same year, WV Writers chose her for their J.U.G. Award, (Just Uncommonly Good) and she received the Ella Dickey Literary Award for “The Rebel in the Red Jeep.”
The mother of four children, she graduated from Marshall University in 1982 with a Regent’s BA degree in English and business. Now, also a practicing ceramic sculptor, she lives in Huntington with her husband, Richard Cobb.
