Elizabeth Edwards, author, attorney, community activist and wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, will serve as speaker for Meredith College’s spring commencement, which will be held on Sunday, May 13 at 10 a.m. in Meredith’s outdoor McIver Amphitheater.

Edwards has traveled extensively across the country during her husband’s presidential and vice-presidential campaigns. The day after the general election in 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In her 2006 autobiography, “Saving Graces,” she chronicled her fight against breast cancer and other milestones in her life.

As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Elizabeth Edwards majored in English. She went on to study American literature but then switched to law, graduating from UNC Law School in May 1977.

Following law school, she clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. Later, she worked for the North Carolina Attorney General’s office and then was a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh. She also taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at UNC Law School for two years, and in 1997–98, she was a member of the first group of Public Fellows at UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences.