Chapter&VerseN E W S L E T T E R O F T H E C R E A T I V E W R I T I N G P R O G R A M A T U N C C H A P E L H I L L

spring 2010Daphne Athas Is Alive and Welland Living in Carrboro, North Carolina

In this issue

Daphne Athas lives in an old woodencabin two miles from campus, onsome of the last remaining undevel-oped acreage in Carrboro. It’s not the

easiest place to find: the driveway is unmarkedand unpaved, almost hidden between two of thenewer neighborhoods that have sprung up aroundher. She’s lived on this same land for a very longtime, even since before she started teaching at theUniversity of North Carolina, in 1968. So, whilesome things seem as though they never change,at least one momentous thing has: after 40 yearsof teaching and mentoring at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill, as of Fall semester2009, Daphne Athas has officially retired.

That being said, Daphne Athas has never hadmuch use for anything strictly official. “I’m still aplayer,” she says. “I’m keeping my hand in.” Shecontinues to be in touch with a range of students,who, over the years, have become her friends.And she would much rather talk to them, shesays, than most people her own age. “They haveso much more to say,” she says. “They are somuch more alive.” Smiling now because, whilethe pun was unintentional, she’s not going to takeit back. Even through her cataracts, her eyesspark mischievously. It’s her ears and her eyes thatkeep her from the classroom now; it’s certainlynot her spirit or her desire.

Daphne began teaching at UNC-CH alongwith Max Steele and Doris Betts; together theytook a fledging creative writing program andhelped turn it into arguably the leading under-graduate program in the nation. As Doris Betts

says, “Jessie Rehder was the entire CreativeWriting program when she died in 1967, and ittook three people to succeed—not replace—her:Max, Daphne and me. Max was director of theprogram and his guiding hand rested lightly,allowing a lively and original writer and teacherlike Daphne to develop her classroom style andvivid reputation.”

She is also a prolific writer. Entering Ephesus (anovel) was included on TIME’s Ten Best FictionList in 1971. Cora (a novel) won the Sir RaleighAward. She has been Fulbright Professor ofAmerican Literature at the University of Tehran,has published both fiction and non fiction includ-ing travel, poetry, drama and literary criticism,and received the University’s Mentor Award forLifetime Achievment in 2003. Her work hasappeared in a number of journals and periodicalsincluding South Atlantic Quarterly, Frank, NewWorldWriting, Botteghe Oscure, Shenandoah, American Lettersand Commentary, Chicago Tribune Book World,Transatlantic Review, Hudson Review, College English,Philadelphia Inquirer, The World and I, and others.

In 2007 the maverick grammar text, Gram-o-Rama: Breaking the Rules, edited by MarianneGingher, was published. This book addresses the

An interview withDan Kois,

Faculty and Alumni News,Prize-Winning Authors

and More!

Chapter and Versepublished yearly by the

Creative Writing Program

Daniel Wallace, Editor

UNC Chapel HillGreenlaw Hall, CB#3520

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520

C&V@unc.eduhttp://english.unc.edu/creative

Phone 919.962.4000Fax 919.962.3520

gap between classic grammar and cyber sound-byte-language through hearing, word-play, andperformance art (see article on page 5).

Daphne, of course, continues to write. A bookof her collected essays, Chapel Hill in Plain Sight:Views From the Other Side of the Tracks, is scheduled toappear later this year. It’s a collection of essaysabout Chapel Hill and Carrboro, from theDepression, World War II, and the McCarthyyears, to the present. Daphne observes peopleand place through the decades, giving the readeran understanding of everything from race andclass to the creative and idiosyncratic charactersshe knew and loved. She writes about BettySmith, Junius Scales, Horace Williams, MissCrook (of Crook’s Corner), Ab Abernathy(original owner of the Intimate Bookshop),Paul Green, Max Steele, Hal Prince, andGimgoul Castle, with cameos of Gertrude Stein,Alice B. Toklas, and Faulkner. Woven throughoutare threads of Daphne’s own life as a writer, adaughter, a friend.

It is difficult to imagine our creative writingprogram without Daphne Athas. She did notcontribute to it, so much as she helped create it,and for that all of us will be forever grateful.

I could never capture the full voltage of her exquisite literary luminescence. A weak abridgmentof all I could say: she is broad-minded to the point that you can sail around the globe onwhat she knows, and it all floats; she is funny, curious, outrageous, surprising, zigzaggerishamazing as the Great Wall of China in her thinking; she inspires; she argues; she flatters;she rebels; she teaches as much by how she lives as what she pontificates; she originates andsticks to it; she may be the most slyly truthful person I’ve ever known. —Marianne Gingher.

1.

In my second year as director ofCreative Writing, I continue to beamazed by the range and depth of

this expansive undergraduate pro-gram, and inspired by the energy andability demonstrated by our hard-working faculty, students, and staff.It’s a privilege to be part of such awonderful community of writers.

In 2009-2010, Creative Writing atCarolina offered a total of 51 classes,31 of prose (fiction, non-fiction, cre-ative non-fiction, children’s literature,stylistics, and playwriting) and 20 of poetry. Weserved 751 UNC undergraduates—a record number.By “we,” I mean the teachers, of course, but also ourdiligent administrative assistant,Anita Braxton,who deftly coordinates the registration of hundredsof Creative Writing minors every semester, anexhaustive and exhausting task. Several dozen differ-ent courses, from the freshman to the senior level,were available to students, including a number ofnew classes—Pam Durban’s “Living Writers,” BlandSimpson’s “Lyrics and Lyricists,” Randall Kenan’s“Food Writing,” and Marianne Gingher’s “Short-Short Fiction.”

2.

Abiding support for the Creative Writing Programcomes from all across campus—from Department ofEnglish and Comparative Literature Chair BeverlyTaylor and her administrative board; from ourmany friends and counselors in South Building, par-ticularly Chancellor Holden Thorp, College ofArts & Sciences Dean Karen Gil, Senior AssociateDeanWilliam Andrews, Director of Communi-cations Dee Reid and Assistant Director ofCommunications Kim Spurr; and from ExecutiveDirector Jamie May, Associate Director RobParker, Associate Director of Capital GiftsMargaret V. Costley, and all the staff of the Arts& Sciences Foundation. We are very thankful forsuch friends.

As announced in last year’s letter, Sallie Shuping-Russell (’77) of Chapel Hill made a $666,000 giftto UNC which would fund an innovative newcourse in the Creative Writing Program featuringthe work of some of the nation’s most notable writ-ers. That course—organized and taught by ProfessorPam Durban, Doris Betts Distinguished Professorof English—was offered for the first time in fall2009, and was a tremendous success. Four majorAmerican fiction writers came to campus during thesemester to participate in the “Living Writers” courseand to give public readings for the University com-munity: they were Tobias Wolff in mid-Septem-ber, Cary Holladay later that month, StuartDybek in October, and Andrea Barrett inNovember. “Living Writers” is our program’s first andonly semester-length class arranged entirely arounda series of visiting writers and their works: we hopethat this kind of close contact with authors, especial-ly when students have read and studied and imitatedtheir fiction, will give young writers the chance tohave extended conversations with those practicingthe art and craft to which they aspire.

The support of James KenanIII (’68) has, during the pastdecade, made possible the KenanVisiting Writer Program. For the2009-2010 academic year,Wilmer Mills, a poet fromTennessee, served his secondterm as Kenan Visiting Writer,which proved beneficial both tothe program and the writer. LoriOstlund—whose story collec-tion The Bigness of the World wonthe Flannery O’Connor Awardfor Short Fiction—will be ourtenth Kenan Writer, beginning

this coming fall.

Other private funds supporting Creative Writingactivities include the Rankin Faculty Support Fund,established by Alex Rankin (’77); the Burrus Fund,established by Ann Williams Burrus (’52); theFroelich Family Fund, established to help increaseour lecturers’ stipends by Henry (’81) and MollyFroelich of Charlotte; and our Gift Fund. TheWalker Percy (’37) Fund, an endowment helpingunderwrite our lecturers, was set in motion severalyears ago by Frank Borden Hanes, Sr. (’42).The Robert Ruark Award, for student non-fictionwriting about North Carolina’s natural world,receives support from the Ruark Society of ChapelHill, led by retired attorney and author James T.Cheatham III (’57, ’61 LLBJD).

The Thomas Wolfe Scholarship (founded in 2001by author and philanthropist Frank BordenHanes, Sr., of Winston-Salem) held its ninthnational competition this school year. Its readingcommittee members again were RebeccaMorphis (’01 MA), Tara Powell (’04 PhD), andCourtney Jones (’01, BA); and its four board ofadvisors members were poet Alan Shapiro,prizewinning novelist David Payne (’77), andScholarship co-directors Bland Simpson (’73)andMarianne Gingher. We appreciate theongoing counsel and help we receive fromMorehead Foundation officers Charles Lovelace(’77) andMegan Mazzocchi (’82). As we saycongratulations and farewell to our fifth WolfeScholar,Nate Lumpkin (’10), we announce withpleasure that our ninth Thomas Wolfe Scholar—Sarah Jordan Castelloe of Asheville, N.C.—will enter Carolina’s Class of 2014 this coming fall,joining current ScholarsMaria Devlin (’11) andDenise Rickman (’11), Jenna Hall (’12), andMaria Carlos (’13).

2 Chapter & Verse

3.

One of the pleasures of the Creative Writing com-munity here at Carolina is the abundance of literaryactivity outside the classroom, spread throughoutthe year.

On October 6, Roy Blount, Jr.—popularhumorist, novelist, biographer, journalist, and mem-oirist—was presented the Thomas Wolfe (’20)Award and Medal, made possible by Universityfriend and benefactor Ben Jones III (’50) as partof the annual lecture series established by theThomas Wolfe Society. Mr. Blount delivered theWolfe Lecture to an overflow house in Carroll Hallauditorium, reading from his work and answeringaudience questions with thoughtful wit.

As usual, we enjoyed two Armfield Poetry Readingsthis year, sponsored by the Armfield Fund forPoetry, a bequest to us from the late poet BlancheBritt Armfield (’28 MA). Our excellent readerswere Gibbons Ruark, recently retired from theUniversity of Delaware, who read in DonovanLounge on September 22, and Beth AnnFennelly of the University of Mississippi, whoread in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room inWilson Library on January 28.

On December 8, another SRO crowd in PleasantsFamily Assembly Room in Wilson Library cheeredthe lively performance byMarianne Gingher’s“Gram-o-Rama” Stylistics class, this year called“BATTLESTAR GRAMMATICA.” Marianne accu-rately describes it as “the Cirque de Soleil of word-play! The Saturday Night Live of Language Arts! Thegrammar gymnast’s Olympics!” “Take a jaunt to thecreative writing wild side!” she invites. “You won’tbelieve your EARS! Hear words fly beyond the grav-itational pull of sense! Parodies, puns, tumbling ver-bals, modifiers dangling! You’ll be dazzled andcharmed! Your worldly wearies, disarmed!” A majorfeature article on this year’s performance—called“Rocking Grammar,” which praised Gram-o-Rama as“the quirkiest creative writing course in America”—ran in the Raleigh News & Observer, and later in theCharlotte Observer and other newspapers: it’s availableonline at http://www.newsobserver.com/2009/12/20/247459/rocking-grammar.html.

On March 24, this year’s Morgan Writer-in-Resi-dence—Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction-writerEdward P. Jones—read a selection of his workin Carroll Hall with great intensity, and answeredquestions from the crowd with great honesty.During his week on campus as Morgan Writer, Mr.Jones—a MacArthur Fellow best-known for hisnovel The Known World, which won the NationalBook Critics Circle Award as well as the Pulitzer—was a quietly powerful presence, in classes and inconversation and in other situations, alwaysthoughtful and frank: we thoroughly enjoyed havinghim among us. As always, we are deeply grateful toour friends and Carolina alumniAllen (’65) andMusette (’76) Morgan, whose support started thiswriter-in-residence program nearly two decadesago. Every year, the entire University communitylooks forward to Morgan week, directed by SusanIrons (M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’01), as the premier literaryrite of Chapel Hill’s spring.

Director’sReport

Prize-WinningWriters

Spring 2010 3

In addition to readings by our Morgan Writer andArmfield Poets, we also sponsoredWilmer Mills’farewell Kenan Visiting Writer reading on April 13,as well as several readings in Donovan Lounge byfaculty members, poets Rachel Richardson andRoss White on November 17 and fiction-writerQuinn Dalton on March 2.

4.

Major congratulations to our 2010 seniors whowrote book-length theses, completed the year-longseminars in fiction- and poetry-writing, gave publicreadings in the spring, and graduated in May withhonors. Taking honors or highest honors in DanielWallace’s senior Honors fiction class wereHannah Easley, Brock Faucette, NateLumpkin, John McIlwee, Delaney Nolan,Brittany Price, Ariel Rudolph, and SarahDaughtry Symons. Taking honors or highesthonors in Michael McFee’s senior Honors poetryclass were Hannah Bonner, Zena Cardman,Chris Castro-Rappl, Ryan Dowdy,Caroline Fisher, Michelle Hicks, EmilyHylton, Matt Poindexter, Henry Spelman,and Julia Trantham.

All of our Creative Writing faculty members arededicated teachers who are also deeply involved intheir own creative work, and they are ambassadorsfor literature to North Carolina and the nation. Ican’t thank them enough for all they do. Here’s theroll call of our 2009-2010 faculty, 17 in all, most ofwhom have detailed individual entries about theiractivities elsewhere in this newsletter: MichaelChitwood, Quinn Dalton, Pam Durban,Marianne Gingher, Evan Gurney, RandallKenan, Michael McFee, Wilmer Mills, RuthMoose, Travis Mulhauser, LawrenceNaumoff, Rachel Richardson, James Seay,Alan Shapiro, Bland Simpson, DanielWallace, and Ross White.

As I’ve said before and as I’ll say again, I feel mightylucky to be in this position at this place. CreativeWriting at Carolina has such terrific students, suchdedicated teachers, such a helpful administrativeassistant, such outstanding alumni, and such loyalfriends: especially in strapped times like these, weare very fortunate to be able to continue expandingand improving our program, which is—I stillbelieve—the finest undergraduate Creative WritingProgram anywhere.

—Michael McFee, Director,Creative Writing at Carolina

P.S. And if you’re interested in contributing to ourDoris Betts/Jessie Rehder Creative WritingFund or to our Max Steele Fund, established to honorthese great author-teachers and intended to supportthrough innovations and enhancements the contin-ued vitality of the program, please contact Mr.James May, The Arts & Sciences Foundation, CB#6115, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599.

BLANCHE BRITT ARMFIELD PRIZEIN POETRY 2010David Andrew Hutcheson

SUZANNE BOLCH LITERARY AWARDMatthew Scott Poindexter

WILLIE LAVONSA MOORE PRIZEIN CREATIVE NON-FICTIONRebecca Lee ClayEvan Kershaw Rose, Runner Up

GEORGE B. WYNNE AWARD FOR FICTIONCatya Shaina McMullen

ROBERT RUARK AWARD IN CREATIVENON-FICTIONJohn Timanus McElweeJesse Blake Addison, 1st Runner UpBryce Elliot Butner, 2nd Runner Up

ROBERT B. HOUSE MEMORIAL PRIZEIN POETRYMatthew Scott Poindexter

LOUIS D. RUBIN, JR., PRIZE INCREATIVE WRITINGHannah Karen Easley

MAX STEELE PRIZE IN FICTIONSarah Daughtry Symons

ANN WILLIAMS BURRUS PRIZEMichelle Renee HicksHonorable Mention: Emily Marshall Hylton

MINI-MAX SHORT-SHORT FICTION PRIZESusannah Jeanette LongAriel Elyse Rudolph, 2nd PlaceWei Xiang Tchou, 3rd Place

WILLIAM H. HOOKS AWARDS FORCHILDREN’S LITERTUREBest Young Adult Novel:Katherine Rose Hanna

Honorable Mention:Alexandra Diane Mussorici

Best Middle Grade Novel:Jennifer Katlyn Morgan

Honorable Mention:Michael Joseph Smith

Best Picture Book: Cameron VanIderstine and Katherine FlemingGalloway

BLANCHE BRITT ARMFIELD PRIZEIN POETRY 2009Henry Lawlor Spellman

SUZANNE BOLCH LITERARY AWARDSkylor Gudas

WILLIE LAVONSA MOORE PRIZEIN CREATIVE NON-FICTIONErin Rebecca StonekingMegan Allison Hannay, Runner Up

GEORGE B. WYNNE AWARD FOR FICTIONAriel Elyse Rudolph

ROBERT RUARK AWARD IN CREATIVENON-FICTIONLaura Rose DeMariaRachel Jin Bloom, 1st Runner UpAdam Blake Wright, 2nd Runner Up

ROBERT B. HOUSE MEMORIAL PRIZEIN POETRYJuliana Kathryn Daugherty

LOUIS D. RUBIN, JR., PRIZE INCREATIVE WRITINGSamuel J. Need

MAX STEELE PRIZE IN FICTIONRebecca Danielle Bernstein

ANN WILLIAMS BURRUS PRIZEMichael Guion Pratt

MINI-MAX SHORT-SHORT FICTION PRIZESusannah LongAriel Elyse Rudolph, 2nd PlaceAngela Tchou, 3rd Place

We honor and celebrate our writing award andprize winners for 2009 and 2010, and we express our

appreciation to our judges.

Dan Kois (‘96) has recently pub-lished his first book, FacingFuture, with 33 1/3 Press. It’sabout Iz Kamakawiwo’ole, a

Hawaiian singer and songwriter best known for hisrendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What aWonderful World.” Chapter and Verse asked Dan aboutthe book, about his experience at Carolina and hiscareer as a professional writer.

Chapter and Verse: How did you come towrite this book? What attracted you to theproject?Dan Kois:My wife (a fellow UNC grad; we metthe first day of freshman year on the Ehringhausbeach-volleyball court) and I lived in Honolulu for ayear after grad school, while she clerked for a federaljudge and I finished my MFA thesis. I really fell inlove with the islands and particularly with their cul-ture—not just the laid-back aloha spirit, or the tradi-tional hula/’ukulele/luau of it all, but also the pop cul-ture of the state: the cheap-sounding island reggaeand the other ways that contemporary Hawaiiansasserted their separateness from mainland and main-stream America.

We moved to New York, where I worked a numberof jobs before finally landing, happily, on writingabout culture. I was a fan of the 33 1/3 series (33third.blogspot.com), and when the editor of the seriesannounced an open call for proposals, I decided that a33 1/3 would be an ideal first book: slim, low-pres-sure, and with a subject completely up to me. I was afan of Israel’s music and I knew his life story, a bit;more to the point, I knew that if I could getContinuum to agree to let me write about Iz, it meantI could justify a long research trip to Hawai’i.

CV: How long did it take you to write? Wasit arduous?Dan: The long research trip to Hawai’i wasn’t ardu-ous, that’s for sure. I went for almost a month in thefall of 2007, joined for much of the trip by my wifeand daughters and in-laws. I had pitched the book toContinuum as part biography, part humorous trave-logue—i.e. that the spine of the book would comefrom my journeys through Hawai’i, trying to getreclusive, outsider-shunning Native Hawaiians to talkto some stupid haole from the mainland about theirhero. You know, hilarity would ensue. Imagine mysurprise when it turned out that everyone was incredi-bly nice, welcoming, and forthcoming, shooting myidea for the book all to hell. The result, I’m happy tosay, is a far more satisfying read, but it definitelythrew me for a loop at first.

Luckily, I had over a year and a half to sit on thematerial before I could find time to write the book. Iwas working full-time as a blogger and editor for New

York magazine, plus raising twochildren, and writing a bookseemed out of the question. Myeditors at Continuum were niceenough to let me push mydeadline back twice, but as theJuly 2009 deadline approached, I realized I needed tojust write the damn thing. I’d quit my job to freelancefull-time, and we’d moved to the Washington, DCarea, so in the end I just turned down all freelanceassignments for May and June. May I spent re-acquainting myself with the interviews I’d conducted19 months before; June I spent writing the entirebook. Thank God 33 1/3 books are short.

CV: Is this the sort of thing you’ve alwayswanted to do, or do you have other ambi-tions as a writer as well?Dan: At Carolina I definitely thought of myself as afiction writer, and during my fiction MFA at GeorgeMason I thought the same. And I hope that I mightstill be. But I’ve found I really like writing about cul-ture—music, movies, books, comics, theater, TV—and I really like reporting and telling stories, and sothis book —a combination of the two—turned out tobe just about perfect.

CV:Who did you study with at UNC?Dan: I took a freshman poetry writing class with thewonderful Dr. Kirkpatrick, and then studied fiction

with Bland Simpson, MarianneGingher, and of course Doris Betts. Ialso took some great playwrightingclasses with Tom Huey, where myclassmates included future real-lifewriters Sarah Dessen, Mac Rogers,

and Catherine Trieschmann.

CV:What influence do you think the under-graduate writing program at UNC had onyour career?Dan: Plenty! The writing program was my first expe-rience of a community of like-minded writers: peoplewho cared about, and got excited about, the samethings I did. The teachers, and the fellow students,made me a better writer, but also—maybe just asimportantly—convinced me that good writing wassomething worth pursuing. I was really proud tobe part of that community, and have always triedsince then to follow what seemed to me to be theCarolina way of helping your friends and classmatessucceed just as you yourself try to succeed. I workedat the Bull’s Head through college, and I’m proud thatmy main contribution to the writing program—founding the Youth Angst Society—still seems to bealive and kicking today.

Oh, and without my undergrad writing-workshopexperience, I never could have written this:http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/our_undergrad_fiction_workshop.html

An InterviewwithDanKois

4 Chapter & Verse

Marianne Gingher’s stylisticsclass, Gram-o-Rama, stagedtheir annual performance thisyear in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room atWilson Library. It was, as always, a diverting rompthrough the intricacies of the English language.Pam Kelley was inspired to write an article about it,which appeared in the Raleigh News and Observerand the Charlotte Observer. The article is re-print-ed her, with her permission, in its entirety.

ROCKINGGRAMMARby Pam Kelley, News & Observer / Charlotte ObserverSunday, Dec 20, 2009

UNC-Chapel Hill’s Marianne Gingher, acreative writing professor, begins her styl-istics course each August with a grammartest. Most students fail it.

By now, Gingher expects this. In fact, she awards aprize for the funniest failure.

This year, the prize went to Jillian Vogel, a sopho-more from New York City. “Words such as ‘HoleyMoley!’ and ‘Cowabunga!’ are examples of what?” onetest question asked.

The correct answer: Interjections. Vogel’s answer?Surfer language.

Like many of Gingher’s students, Vogel arrived atUNC without knowing formal grammar. “Not a lick,”she says.

This is no surprise. High school grammar instruc-tion fell out of favor in the 1960s and has never recov-ered.

Gingher is not dismayed. By the end of the course,her students will gain a new appreciation for grammar.They’ll also give a public performance featuring - getthis - the best of a semester’s worth of grammar andlanguage exercises.

When it’s over, they’ll post the show on YouTube.They’ll marvel at how a playful grammar and languageclass made them better writers.

And years from now, after they’ve forgotten thecontent of entire college courses, they’ll remember thenight they elevated grammar to performance art.

Stylistics is the quirkiest course in UNC’s CreativeWriting Program. It may be the quirkiest creative writ-ing course in America.

Officially, stylistics is the study of language ele-ments such as sound, form and vocabulary. That’s whatUNC’s course is, too, but filtered through the originalmind of its creator, Chapel Hill writer Daphne Athas.

Athas, 86, a retired creative writing professor, grewup in an era when you learned grammar by parsingsentences—breaking them up and identifying eachword by its part of speech. She didn’t mind learningthat way, but when she began teaching stylistics in1976, she suspected contemporary students would balk.

“These days,” she says, “you’ve got to beguile anddelight.”

So she concocted her own exercises: Write a storyusing a single verb combined with different preposi-tions. Create a poem with only conjunctions. Choosea piece of instrumental music, then write a story thatfits the beat.

About halfway through the first semester, she decid-ed to end the class with a public performance.Students loved it.

Stylistics went on hiatus in the mid-’80s, whenAthas scaled back from full-time teaching. But in 2001,Gingher, a fervent fan, revived the course.

Spring 2010 5

AAbboouutt tthhee kkaazzoooossNow, she teaches it each fall using Athas’ textbook,“Gram-o-Rama: Breaking the Rules.” Cover illustra-tions include examples of word play. “I’ll show you mydiphthong,” one says, “if you show me yours.” Alongwith the book, students must have kazoos, for explor-ing how sentence rhythm conveys meaning.

One of Gingher’s first assignments this year wasAthas’ no-noun exercise: Create synonyms for nounswithout using nouns. Cow became “black and whiteudderly milked.” “Baby” morphed into “tiny crankydrooling.”

Soon, Gingher’s 14 students were rewriting songsand famous passages, turning perfectly lovely activesentences into deadly passive constructions. In thisway, they learn to spot passive voice. “They learngrammar,” Gingher says, “on the sly.”

By mid-October, they had eased into parodies, non-sense language and malapropisms. Each class, theytook turns reading their assignments.

As each student finished, Gingher critiqued. Onepiece sagged under the weight of excessive mala-propisms. Another nonsense-language piece didn’tconvey enough meaning. “Nonsense should makesense, in a weird way,” she explained.

WWhhaatt wwoorrkkssSo if grammar can be such rollicking fun, why isn’t ittaught more?

In large part, says retired Penn State ProfessorMartha Kolln, because experts concluded that old-style grammar instruction was ineffective.

“It was a matter of classifying, parsing, learninggroups of words,” says Kolln, author of “RhetoricalGrammar.” Teachers didn’t relate exercises to writing,so the grammar instruction didn’t help studentsbecome better writers.

Today, students learn much more about writing—crafting a thesis statement, organizing a paragraph,polishing through rewriting. But they often can’t iden-tify a predicate or misplaced modifier. Kolln arguesthat anti-grammar forces went too far. “Students don’tknow how to talk about their language,” she says.“They don’t have a common vocabulary.”

OOnn ssttaaggeeOn a rainy evening this month, 150 people—students,faculty, family members—packed a room in UNC’sWilson Library, eager to be entertained by grammarexercises.

Students titled this year’s show “BattlestarGrammatica.” Athas sat in front.

For more than an hour, the class performed chants,parodies, word play. They recited the Balloon Boy sagato the tune of “The Addams Family.” They delivered anoun-free commercial for the Snuggie, the blanketwith sleeves: “Ultra-soft and super baggy; move aroundand fits great!”

In one skit, a father and his son discussed sex—entirely in passive voice:

“It is not forgotten what was done by us in the back seat whenit was told to our parents that the movies had been gone to.”

“Aw, sick!” the son replied. “This is not needed to be heard.”“Protection must always be worn,” the father counseled.The son didn’t want to discuss it. Tempers flared.Then he stomped off: “It is wished that birth was never achieved

by me!”

In many pieces, music, and especially rhythm, wereintegral. In “Hiya Gorgeous,” women chanted lamemale pick-up lines:

Damn girl. Ain’t you fine?I don’t have a girlfriend. You can be mine.I’ll keep you at home so I know where you are.Get out of my dreams; get into my car.

Then they chanted a reply:Thank you, but I’d rather walk.No. No. No. No.I’ve got mace. I’ve got mace.

Reading the piece doesn’t do it justice. You’ve got tohear it.

The same could be said of the entire stylistics course.“Battlestar Grammatica” ended to enthusiastic

applause. Classmates gave Gingher a bouquet. Theyhugged each other.

Vogel, the student who won the funniest failureaward at the start of class, says knowing grammar ruleshas given her the confidence to play with them, breakthem and develop her own writing style.

Has her writing improved? She thinks so.Certainly, her grammar knowledge has. A few days

after the show, Vogel, along with the rest of the class,took Gingher’s grammar test again. This time, she passed.

Gram-o-Rama

6 Chapter & Verse

Thomas Wolfe Scholar

M A R I AC A R L O S ’ 1 3

Icould tell you about the all-nighters I’vepulled, miraculously emerging from thelibrary with a finished paper. I couldtell you about the ridiculous number of

cigarettes I smoked after my very first C on atest, trying to replace the feelings of disgustand disappointment with a nicotine buzz. Icould tell you about the time my friends and Isnuck onto the roof of the dorm, pointed tothe water tower and laughed, as if to sayYou’re next, or the time we accidentally set ofan alarm in Wilson, or my secret spot in Davisthat’s perfect for naps. Or, I could tell youabout the first poem I wrote in college, how Irevised it throughout that whole semester,how I am revising it still. I could tell you abouta professor who pushed me as a writer harderthan anyone I’ve ever come across—how I’mlearning to push myself even more than hedid. I could tell you about the first rejectionletter I got from an editor, and the sweet, per-verse satisfaction of getting it over with. Icould tell you about Cellar Door meetings, orthe time I skipped a recitation to see Beth AnnFennelly give a reading, or how, despite itsugly façade, Greenlaw is like home base in agame of tag, for when I feel like putting off thepapers and exams and quizzes chasing medown, and just want to wander aimlesslythrough its halls.

There’s another thing I could tell you. Aconfession, actually: I haven’t yet read any ofThomas Wolfe’s work. I know, I know, it’s kindof blasphemous, considering the fact that Iwouldn’t be here if he hadn’t…existed. I mean,I know I’m going to read it eventually. That’s agiven. But I’ll make a pact with you, reader:I’ll close my iTunes, shut off the television,lock my door, and read Look Homeward,Angel word for word right this second, if youcan tell me the best way to reach the ladder atthe base of the water tower.

Lydia Millet—an alumna of theUniversity and of our CreativeWriting Program—was a finalist forthe 2010 Pulitzer Prize in fictionthis year, for her collection of shortstories called “Love in InfantMonkeys,” published by Soft SkullPress. It is her seventh book, fol-lowing six novels, quite an output for such a young writer. Chapterand Verse asked her about the experience, and this is what she said:

Chapter and Verse: Being recognized by the Pulitzer committee is a rare honor. Didit come as a shock when you found out you were short-listed?

Millet: I thought it was a prank, at first. This particular book of mine features a first story,about the pop star Madonna, that’s fairly crude and I was impressed to discover thatcrudeness had been tolerated by such an institution as the Pulitzer. But even in institu-tions, committees are composed of people, of course. I had good readers; I was fortunate.

C and V: Creative writing teachers are barraged with the question, Can creative writing betaught? What’s your answer?

Millet: I think what writing teachers can really give is passion for reading and criticizingand thinking. And of course we improve with experience, as writers, so the more we readand write the better we get at both of them. When I studied at Carolina, I loved myteacher Daphne Athas, who gave me so much of her time and her love: she’s a rare person,a truly inspiring and life-changing teacher. I liked all my other teachers there too, verymuch so—Elizabeth Spencer, who was my first teacher when I came in as a freshman, andlater Jill McCorkle and Doris Betts—honestly, there was a great faculty for workshopsthen. This was between 1986 and 1990. They were all gentle and kind, but not too gentleand kind.

C and V: To quote the very favorable New York Times review: “Lydia Millet’s stories uni-formly begin with arresting lines, all of them guns on the wall, waiting to go off.”Are first lines in a story important to you? Why?

Millet: First and last lines are equally crucial—first lines to seduce, last lines to devastate.We hope. The stuff in the middle is to sustain the seduction, meanwhile slyly preparingfor the devastation.

That’s a best-case scenario, of course. Few writers strive for indifference.

Class of '14 Thomas Wolfe Scholar Jordan Castelloe

Lydia Millet, Pulitizer Finalist

Read more about Jordan Castello here:http://college.unc.edu/features/april2010/article.2010-04-20.4043888034

Michael Chitwood has work forth-coming in or in recent issues of TheAtlantic Monthly, Threepenny Review, Field,Smartish Pace, Southern Poetry Review, Crazy -horse, Oxford American, Now & Then and TheSun. Tupelo Press will publish his newbook, Clamor, this fall. This spring hewas a Chapman Fellow at the IAH.

Pam Durban published a review of thenovel Mrs. Caliban in Books: The EssentialInsider's Guide, edited by Mark Strand, anda short-short story, "Island," in Long StoryShort, edited by Marianne Gingher. Shehas recently completed a new novel, TheHand of All, and a collection of short sto-ries, Soon. She designed and taught twonew creative writing classes: a class in re -vision and the Living Writers class. Thisclass, made possible by a generous en -dowment from Sallie Shuping-Russell,brought four well-known contemporarywriters to campus to meet with studentswho had read their work. The four guestwriters to visit the class were TobiasWolff, Cary Holladay, Stuart Dybek andAndrea Barrett.

Marianne Gingher directed the fallStylistics (Gram-o-Rama) Class per-formance, “Battlestar Grammatica,” per-formed in Wilson Library to a full house.During the summer she attended theNational Puppeteers of America Con -ference in Atlanta and with her collabo-rator, Deborah Seabrooke, designed andcreated seventeen puppets and wrote aplay called Fuzzy and Beej in Africa whichwill premier in 2010. Her newest bookis Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by 65 ofNorth Carolina’s Finest Writers (UNC Press,2009), an anthology which she edited.

Michael McFee continues as Direc -tor of the Creative Writing Program atCarolina. He has published poemsrecently in the pages of the Southern andCincinnati Reviews, and his poems havealso appeared on the Slate and PoetryDaily websites in 2009. E-publishing stilldoesn’t quite seem real to him, but he’s adinosaur and he’s trying to learn lest hebecome extinct. His essay “Just As I AmNot,” about the Billy Graham Library inCharlotte, will appear (in print) in theSummer 2010 issue of Southern Cultures.

Wilmer Mills has had poems includedin The Swallow Anthology of New AmericanPoets, edited by David Yezzi. Dick Davishas included him in an anthology of sixAmerican poets to be published byAnvil Poetry Press in England next year.His poems have been published recentlyby The Southern Review and Measure, andare now forthcoming from Poetry, TheSewanee Review, and The Yale Review.

James Seay’s poems were represent-ed in the anthology Don’t Leave Hungry:Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review, and inthe Australian Broadcasting Corpora -tion’s program “Poetica—Where BooksFall Open.” How or why the Aussieschose his poem he hasn’t a clue. Heserved as judge for the annual poetryaward of the Mississippi Institute of Artsand Letters. A profile of Seay is includedin The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Bland Simpson published “Adven turesin Musicians’ Theater” (N.C. LiteraryReview) and “The Cottage Mover” (LongStory Short); released songs on The RedClay Ramblers’ Old North State; enjoyed a Chicago revival of Pump Boys & Dinettes(the Broadway hit featuring his and JimWann’s “Catfish”), a Georgia KingMackerel, two N.C. productions of Kudzu(Herrick-Marlette-Simpson), and anoth-er of Hot Grog (Simpson-Wann); lecturedto UNC alumni aboard a Toronto-to-

Ruth Moose was honored by theNorth Carolina Writers Conference, an organization started 60 years ago by Inglis Fletcher and Paul Green. Theorganization recognizes one writer ayear at an annual awards ceremony fortheir contributions to North Carolinaliterature. Moose also received aChapman Fellowship for Fall 2009 towork on a teaching project. Her sixthcollection of poetry, The Librarian andOther Poems, was published by MainStreet Press in August.

Lawrence Naumoff appeared atEast Carolina University as one of thetwo featured speakers and readers at anendowed lectureship in Spring of 2009,and has been reading from his short stories and a work-in-progress—aboutthe man who pretends to be WalkerPercy and wants to recreate his life withthe wild-child-girlfriend from The SecondComing—throughout the state.

FacultyNews

Marianne Gingher

Daniel Wallace

Lawrence Naumoff

Michael McFee

Spring 2010 7

Wilmer Mills

Pam Durban

James Seay

Ruth Moose

Rachel Richardson

Ross White

Michael Chitwood

Bland Simpson

Roy Blount received the 2009 Thomas Wolfe Prize. The ThomasWolfe Prize and Lecture honor the memory of one of The University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill's most famous alumni, Thomas ClaytonWolfe (Class of 1920). Established in 1999 with an endowed gift to theDepartment of English, the program recognizes contemporary writers withdistinguished bodies of work.

Edward P. Jones, 2010 Morgan Writer-in-Residence. The MorganWriter-in-ResidenceProgram, established in1993 by Allen and MusetteMorgan of Memphis, bringswriters of distinction tocampus to teach courses,meet with students and faculty, and to give lectures,readings, and symposia.

8 Chapter & Verse

Duluth sail; and premiered “ElizabethCity,” his 7th statewide-broadcast water-ways program (UNC-TV). Simpsonreceived the N.C. Literary & HistoricalAssociation’s R. Hunt Parker MemorialAward for Significant Contributions toNorth Carolina Literature.

Rachel Richardson’s first book ofpoems, Copperhead, will be published inearly 2011 by Carnegie Mellon Uni ver -sity Press. In 2009 she won the BrendaL. Smart Prize in Poetry from NorthCarolina State University, re ceived aTennessee Williams Scholar ship toattend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference,and was a finalist for the EmergingWomen Writers’ Prize from FinishingLine Press. Her poems have recentlyappeared or are forthcoming in Slate,Literary Imagination, Southern Cultures, HungerMountain, Memorious, Center, The Pinch, andNew South, and her poetry reviews havebeen published in the online culturemagazine, The Rumpus.

Daniel Wallace has published sto-ries, articles and reviews in Glimmer Train,The Rome Review, Spirit Magazine, New YorkTimes Book Review, and other magazines.He also writes a monthly humor columnfor Our State Magazine. He won the2010 Johnston Award for TeachingExcellence, and is working on a novelcalled A Cure for Blindness.

Ross White’s poems have appeared orare forthcoming in Cortland Review, TarRiver Poetry, Georgetown Review, and TheCollagist. He received a work-studyscholarship to the 2009 Bread LoafWriters Conference. His small press,Bull City Press, recently published KatieBowler’s long poem State Street.

From Chapel Hill in Plain Sight:

Notes from the Other Side of the Tracks

by DAPHNE ATHAS

From the essay “The Spirit of Play”

The Chapel Hill [literary] tradition was always solidly common. Folk was flaunted for the firsthalf of the twentieth century so successfully that later generations had no idea it didn’t comefrom over thar yon mountain. It came from the international movement sparked in EasternEurope. Later generations believed Proff Koch invented Folk and put it on the map every Friday

night of the summer in the Original Plays series. Yet the folk style sneaked into novels and music to such adegree that contemporary writers and musicians would laugh if they heard it had been an internationalpolitical movement. They don’t acknowledge it, don’t think about it, don’t know what they come from,and don’t care.

Here is where Thomas Wolfe comes in. For he was thelegacy Chapel Hill was claiming in 1940. He was newly deadand very famous. He had set out from Asheville, come toChapel Hill, took classes from Proff [Professor Koch], and wasdetermined to be a playwright. He failed at that of course, butthe unabashed lyrical extravagance of his language, “A stone, aleaf, an unfound door—O Lost, and by the Wind Grieved,Ghost come back again,” formed the melody of the recogniz-ably plebe ian music of North Carolina.

The folk plays of the late Twenties and Thirties flauntedhis combination of mountain illiteracy and lyrical Englishpoetry. Historically, factually they were the same thing, for inthe backwater of swamp and mountain the language of thosecenturies kept and stayed. The miracle is that the traces arethere still; you find them in the language of John Ehle, FredChappell, Lee Smith, and others who come from and writeabout the Appalachian mountains.

Paul Green was the linchpin of this music. By 1940 he wassitting at the Round Table of North Carolina literature, havingtriumphed on Broadway, having won the Pulitzer for In Abra -ham’s Bosom in the late Twenties . . . In his latter days he allowedhimself to be portrayed as the Tolstoy of Chapel Hill, his YasnayaPolyana being that stretch of land now called Greenwood. Butin that era, like Faulkner, he forayed into Hollywood, returningwith loot and buying up land in Chapel Hill and in JohnstonCounty. He was in his prime—money, success, and fame—and he wason the eve of leaving what we used to think of as his seriouswriting. He was switching to what he called his symphonic dramas.

Now in the twenty-first century he is remembered morefor The Lost Colony and the Paul Green Theatre than for his plays. Back then it was as if he had used uphis personal vision and was left with the rhythm and music alone, applying it to a public, social art—pag-eant, dialogue, dances, and music dedicated to history.

The question is: Is his history history, or is it myth? The aesthetic judgment of the younger generation in those days was that the real writer makes a

myth of himself and his experience as he is living it. Thomas Wolfe did that. He was prototypical in seeing his own legend while he was writing it. There is a relationship between the individual, perceptiveworld of a writer who sees his own experience from the inside as well as the outside, creating a realitywhich becomes the legend." Seems to me it makes more sense this way: "There is a relationship betweenthe individual, perceptive world of a writer who sees his own experience from the inside as well as theoutside, AND creating a reality on paper which becomes the legend."

Such thinking is still what drives people to try to write the great American novel. Thomas Wolfe wasthat kind of writer. Just when he died, Paul Green, sixteen years older, was consolidating what had alwaysbeen his social, encompassing Christian vision, inclusive and tolerant of all races, into historical myth.

In the late Thirties when I came to Chapel Hill, Horace Williams, Howard Odum, Proff Koch, the lateThomas Wolfe, and Paul Green were the resident legends. All were Southern except Proff. Our highschool generation breathed them in with little idea of what they were about. And since the death of PaulGreen, they are fixed harder than ever in the firmament. But like all institutions they remain resistant totime while their meaning escapes us.

“Daphne and I have been having the sameconversation since 1982, when she was myteacher in English 34 (intermediate fictionworkshop.) We meet whenever we can, anddiscuss, not in any order and in varyingdegrees of detail, the theological implicationsof omniscience, the narrative sweep ofTolstoy, syntax, Tom Brokaw’s so-calledGreat Generation, the subversive history ofChapel Hill, Joseph Conrad’s notion that literature ought to aspire to the conditions of music, the limits of the present tense, theeffect of technology on language and con-sciousness. I have learned so much from herabout writing, about teaching, and finallyabout how vital it is to remain curious andengaged with the world, and with other people. I can’t imagine how limited my lifewould have been had I not stumbled dumblyinto her classroom.”

—Michael Parker, writer and professor of writing at UNC-Greensboro

Excerpt

Spring 2010 9

Sheryl Mebane (’98) was a postdoc-toral environmental researcher for theentire year of 2009 and helped todesign, carry out and summarize aunique greenhouse gas (GHG) emis-sions inventory. Creative writing hasmeant penning and editing poems,starting and retiring a few new blogsintended to make money, submittingnonfiction book proposals to agentsand publishers and delving into song-writing—her new passion.

C L A S S O F ’ 9 9

Holly Phillips Levent (’99) spentseveral years in publishing and educa-tion in London. She recently spentsome time teaching creative writing inHong Kong at the Kelly Yang Project,an after school writing program forchildren and teens. The Kelly YangProject in Hong Kong offers a summerinternship for English majors. For moreinformation, please write toinfo@kellyyang.com.

Luke Meisner (’99) and his wife,Toolsi, recently welcomed a baby boyinto the world. Kavi Luca Meisner wasborn at 12:28 am on December 2,2009. His name, Kavi, means “poet” inancient Sanskrit.

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Skip Matheny (’00) and TimshelMatheny (’01) are in a rock and rollband called Roman Candle. They live inNashville, TN.

Elizabeth Phillips (’00) chronicleslife as a Mom, her struggles with infer-tility, and her wrestling matches withGod on her blog “Elizabethtown” atwww.henryandgrace.com.

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Stuart Albright (’01) publishedSidelines: A North Carolina Story of Race,Community and High School Football inAugust, 2009. This is his second book, following Blessed Returns, whichwas published in 2005 (both books arethrough McKinnon Press). Seewww.stuartalbright.com.

Oliver Carter (’01) joined Carter &Carter Attorneys-at-Law in July 2009,making Oliver the third generation ofhis family to practice with the firm inWilmington and Southeastern NorthCarolina. In November, Oliver waselected co-Chair of the New HanoverCounty Young Lawyers, and he servesas a co-Chair of the NC BarAssociation’s Young Lawyers Division’sEducation Committee. He contributesregularly to several political blogs andis preparing contributions to the web-site smallwander.com featuring walka-ble towns in Southeastern NC.

Kimberly O’Connor (’01) graduat-ed from the University of Maryland’sMFA program in poetry in May andwas awarded the 2009 Academy ofAmeri can Poets Prize, as well as aDistinguished Teaching AssistantAward. Her poem “Thrush” was a win-ner in AWP’s 2008 Intro contest and waspublished in this fall’s Colorado Review,and her poem “Rereading Leaves ofGrass” won second place in Two Review’s2009 poetry contest. She also hadpoems published or are forthcoming inCloudbank and South Carolina Review.

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Jenny Han (’02) just published hersecond young adult novel with Simon & Schuster. She has two more due outthis fall.

Joanna Pearson’s (’02) first novelfor young adults, The Anthropologist’sGuide to High School, will be published inspring 2011 by Arthur A. Levine Books,an imprint of Scholastic, Inc. She com-pleted her MFA in poetry at the JohnsHopkins University Writing Seminarsin 2009 and has been invited to Yaddoin May 2010 to work on her poetrymanuscript.

Wendy Spitzer (’02) will be releas-ing the first album of her avant-popchamber ensemble, Felix Obelix, inspring 2010. Entitled “The Tick of theClock, the Beat in the Chest,” thealbum will be released by the PoxWorld Empire record label. The albumwill be available for purchase on boththe Felix Obelix and Pox World Empirewebsites. In 2009, Wendy receivedgrants from the Durham Arts Council,the Orange County Arts Commissionand the Strowd Roses Foundation, forher work with Felix Obelix.

C L A S S O F ’ 7 7

Warren Rochelle’s (’77) novel,Harvest of Changelings, came out in paper-back in May 2008 and it looks like thesequel, The Called, will be out in 2010.

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Lois Lineberger Shepherd (’82)is associate professor of public healthsciences and professor of law at theUniversity of Virginia. She is coauthorof Bioethics and the Law.

C L A S S O F ’ 9 4

Dana Terebelski Bowen (’94) isnow the executive editor of Saveur magazine in New York City. Her 20-page feature “Ham for the Holidays”ran in the December 2009 issue.

John Crutchfield (’94) won an awardfor Outstanding Solo Perfor mance atthe 2009 New York InternationalFringe Festival this past August for hisverse-play, The Songs of Robert. This willsoon appear in the anthology of newAmerican plays, Plays and Playwrights.This show is written and performed byMr. Crutch field and directed by SteveSamuels. See his website at johncrutch-field.com.

Andy Young (’94) was recently pub-lished in Best New Poets 2009, Callaloo andGuernica, and had a poem featured inNew York in a flamenco play aboutcoal miners of Andalusia. She teachesin the Creative Writing Program atNew Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

C L A S S O F ’ 9 5

Brian Blanchfield (’95) was the2009 Richard Hugo Fellow at theUniversity of Montana, in Missoulaand continues to teach there in thegraduate creative writing program as avisiting professor. New poems andessays are forthcoming in Boston Reviewand Or: A Literary Tabloid. His first book,Not Even Then, was published in 2004 byUniversity of California Press. Italiantranslations of a few poems in it wererecently included in Nuova PoesiaAmericana: New York, a dual-languageanthology.

Jennifer Henderson (’95) managesthe UNC-Chapel Hill School of Gov -ernment’s Legislative Reporting Serviceoffice in Raleigh during sessions of theNorth Carolina General Assembly.

C L A S S O F ’ 9 6

Michelle Jana Chan (’96) had apiece included in an anthology of trav-el writing which was published inDecember, 2009.

Dan Kois (’96) is a film critic for theWashington Post and is a contributingwriter at New York magazine. He is also an editor of At Length (http://www.atlengthmag.com), an onlinejournal of long-form poetry, fiction,nonfiction and music. His first bookFacing Future—nonfiction about theHawaiian musician Isreal “Iz” Kama -kawiwo’ole—came out in December2009 from Continuum, as part of the33 1/3 series of music criticism books.http://www.dankois.com

C L A S S O F ’ 9 7

Tara Powell’s (’97) first chapbook,Physical Science, will be published byFinishing Line Press in fall 2010.

C L A S S O F ’ 9 8

Laura Harris Emerson (’98) isteaching short story writing at thePacific Grove Adult School.

Shana Fulton (’98) married TomFinigan, UNC Class of ’97, and lives inWashington, DC with Cleo, theRottweiler. She is currently a federalprosecutor with the US Attorney’sOffice. She is writing again and hopesto finish a novel this year.

Jennifer Young (’98) finished herPhD in Creative Writing at the Uni -versity of Southampton in the UK. Shehas just been promoted to Senior Lec -turer in Creative Writing at the Univer -sity of Hertfordshire, where she taughtpoetry and fiction in the undergraduateCreative Writing program. She lives inLondon with her husband Joe.

AlumniNews

memoir At Ease is currently underagency review and she has been writing short essays on her blog, www.dcalareso.blogspot.com.

Joseph Chapman (’05)’s poems haveappeared or are forthcoming in GulfCoast, Main Street Rag. The Portland Review,and BOMBLOG. His honors include TheAnn Williams Burrus Prize in Poetry(2005), the Henry Hoyns Fellowship(2005-2006), and an Aca demy ofAmerican Poets prize (2007). He teachesin the Interdisci plinary StudiesProgram at the University of Virginia.

Charlotte Hagood (’05) completedher MA in ’06 from Vanderbilt Uni ver -sity’s English department and is cur-rently working on a doctoral thesistitled “The Domestication of Environ -men talism: Science, Democracy andthe Ideological Origins of the U.S.Environ mental Movement.” She is alsoenjoying working in Nashville’s grow-ing food security movement by helpingto run an urban agriculture initiativecalled Nashville Urban Harvest.

Matthew Hofer (’05) currentlyworks in southern Japan as an Englishconversation teacher. He has worked asa contributor on two textbooks/work -books on English idioms and hopes towrite a dictionary of sorts on the localJapanese dialect this year.

Erika Kranz (’05) is now Clerk at theU.S. Court of Federal Claims.

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Selena Beckman-Harned (’06)earned her Master of Arts in Profes -sional Writing at Carnegie MellonUniversity. She works for the Town ofChapel Hill as a Program Assistant andfor TeaGschwendner, a tea shop inRaleigh. She is also a freelance writer,editor and designer. See her website atwww.selenacreative.com.

Caitlin Doyle (Thomas WolfeScholar ’06) After completing her timeas the St. Albans Writer-In-Residence,Caitlin received fellowships from theEdward F. Albee Foundation, theVirginia Center for the Creative Artsand others. Caitlin won a DorothySargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in

2009 and was selected as one of twopoets representing New York State inthe global Distant Voices PoetryFestival. She has been nominated for a2011 Pushcart Prize. Her recent publi-cation credits include Best New Poets 2009,The Boston Review, Black Warrior Review,The Warwick Review, Measure,and others.

Jared Fernley (’06) is living andworking as an actor in Chicago. He hasappeared in several productions sincemoving to the city two years ago andhas also made two short films.

Emolyn Liden (’06) is traveling inNicaragua and writing about the tripon gomadnomad.com under “Emolyn’sTravel Snapshots.”

C L A S S O F ’ 0 7

Elizabeth Basnight (’07) recentlystarted a new position at UNC with the Minor in Entrepreneurship asInternship Director.

Carolina Hamilton (’07) is workingin New York at the Lincoln Center forthe Performing Arts where she coordi-nates the Young Patrons program. She’s also pursuing an MFA in CreativeWriting at the New School.

Charles Hodges (’07) went toVirginia Commonwealth University andgot his MS in Mass Communica tionsfrom the VCU Brandcenter. While inRichmond, he won first place and run-ner up in the Style Weekly short fictioncontest. He now lives in New YorkCity and is working as a copywriter foran agency called Wieden + Kennedy.He continues to write fiction and workon various other creative projects.

Ashley Payne (’07) received herMaster’s Degree in Sport and AthleticAdministration from GonzagaUniversity in May of 2009 and is cur-rently working in Athletic Marketing atThe University of Alabama. During hertime at Gonzaga, she published twoshort stories in Reflection, Gonzaga’sJournal of Art and Literature, and wasrecipient of the Jeanne Foster WardianLeadership Award as well as beingnamed Outstanding Graduate Studentby Gonzaga’s faculty and staff.

Marielle Prince (’07) has been work-ing at the UNC-CH School of Educa -tion program, LEARN NC. In her sparetime she serves as the managing editorfor Bull City Press. Last summer, shetook some time off to live and teach atthe NC Governor’s School – West. She

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. At Carolina, we realize writing is a pursuit that takes place over the course of lifetime. We want to hear about it. If you have some news you'd like to share with your Carolinafriends, family and former teachers, please send it our way, at C&V@unc.edu. Whether you're making books, making babies, or simply making a life, we'd love to hear from you.

C L A S S O F ’ 0 3

Atinuke (Tinu) Akintola (’03) com-pleted law school at UNC (2006), gotmarried (also in 2006) and is currentlyworking as an attorney in Boston for theUnited States Department ofTransportation. He volunteers with anumber of youth organizations in thecity and serves as a Board Director forZUMIX, Inc, a youth arts organizationbased in East Boston.

He still makes time to write and havea couple of projects in the hopperincluding articles/short stories/memoirpieces/scripts/screenplays on the topicsof race and racial identity, “first-genera-tion Americanism,” interracial/inter -cultural marriage, divorce, and in-lawrelationships.

Kerri French (’03) held the LarryFranklin and Mei Dwong Fellowshipfrom the Writers’ Room of Boston in2009 and has poems forthcoming in TheSoutheast Review and Barrellhouse. She spentthe past three years in Boston, whereshe taught in the Writing Program atBoston University and in the EnglishDepart ment at Mount Ida College. Sherecently graduated from Boston Uni -versity’s Master of Educa tion program inHigher Education Administration andhas moved to Cambridge, England,where she serves as Administrator forthe University of Cambridge’s AHRCRe search Centre for MusicalPerformance as Creative Practice.

Geoff Wessel (’03) and his wifeBongsu (Jang) of Gimcheon, Korea, arenow making their home in Copenhagen,Denmark. Geoff is a Foreign Service Of -ficer with the US Department of State.

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Rebecca Brunstetter (’04) receivedan MFA from the New School for Dramain NYC. She just had her off-Broadwaydebut with her play Oohrah! at theAtlantic Theater. She is currently residentplaywright at Ars Nova, a member ofthe Women’s Project Playwright’s Laband will be the 2010 resident playwrightat the Finborough Theater in London.

Matthew Salesses (’04) has earnedhis MFA from Emerson College, wherehe was the Presidential Fellow, and iscurrently editor of the graduate literarymagazine, Redivider. His nonfictionchapbook, We Will Take What We Can Get,was published in the summer of 2009 byPublishing Genius Press. He has storiesforthcoming in Glimmer Train and Witness,among others. Past stories have appearedin Mid-American Review, Pleiades, AmericanShort Fiction, The Literary Review, and overtwenty other publications. He is work-ing on a novel.

Teresa Stabelton Cooper (’04) is aSpecial Education teacher in CarteretCounty and lives on the Crystal Coast.She was married March 5, 2005, andhad a son October 31, 2006.

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Dianna Calareso (’05) earned herMFA in Creative Nonfiction from Lesley University in 2007 and lives in the Boston area. She is an editor andfreelance writer and adjunct writing pro-fessor.Her essay “What I Think MyGrandmother Is Thinking” is publishedin the current issue of Paradigm Journal(www.paradigmiournal.com) and heressay “Mt Auburn” has been acceptedfor publication in the upcoming issue ofFalling-Apart.net (www.falling-apart.net),an online human interest magazine. Her

Without Anita Braxton, the Creative Writing ProgramAssistant, none of this would be possible. Thank you!

8 Chapter & Verse

Gulf Coast Reverie

Oysters on the half shell.

Crabs are in the pot.

Tabasco has a sweet smell

And isn't all that hot.

The afternoon was made for beer.

Tonight is made for wine.

Tomorrow is still a blur from here,

And, really, that's just fine.

Wilmer Mills,

Kenan Visiting Writer, 2008-2010

C L A S S O F ’ 0 9

Rebecca Bernstein (’09) is servingas the Artistic Intern at ChicagoDramatists for spring 2010.

Elizabeth DeOrnellas (’09) is cur-rently teaching English I, CreativeWriting and Journalism as a member ofthe Teach for America Charter Corpsin Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her journalism students publish weekly in the TulsaCounty News and also maintain theirown Website. The site, which also features a monthly Creative Writingcontest, can be viewed at http:// websterweekly.wordpress.com.

Kendra Fish (’09) is currently work-ing as an English teaching assistant inBordeaux, France.

Lauren Petty Albritton (’09) is currently working as a research analystfor Tanglewood Research, Inc. inGreensboro, NC. She is also the editorof the most recent edition of the com-pany’s drug abuse prevention curricu-lum. She continues to contemplate pur-suing an MFA in Creative Writing or aPhD in English, as well as trying tomake her way into the publishing busi-ness. She married a fellow Tar Heel,Jordan Albritton, in July, 2008.

Guion Pratt (’09) is working for abeer distributor in Salisbury, NC. Hewill also begin the MFA in CreativeWriting at the University of Virginiathis fall.

Julie Teasdale (’09) is an EnglishMajor, CW and Hebrew Minor fromLoiyangalani, Kenya. This year she willbe going to sub-Saharan Africa withthe Pea ce Corps as a secondary educa-tion volunteer, where she will be teach-ing adult literacy and finishing her firstAfrica novel, Bakshishi.

In MemoriamJenna Nicole Seagraves, 1985–2008

Ristin Cooks, 1968–2009

Margaret Rabb, 1954–2010

will begin the MFA in Creative Writingat the University of Virginia this fall.

Sam Taylor (’07) moved to Bostonand worked for an environmental jus-tice group called Clean Water Actionand for the Episcopal Diocese ofMassa chusetts. He is now in Iraq withhis North Carolina National Guardunit, serving as a Chaplain Assistant.His essays about his life in Iraq appearregularly in the Chapel Hill News, and herecently finished the first draft of anovel, The Eighth Continent.

C L A S S O F ’ 0 8

David Hodges (’08) is living inBrooklyn and going to law school atNew York University. He is a frequentvolunteer with the SuspensionRepresentation Project, working withstudents in the NYC public schoolsand their parents.

Katherine Meehan (’08) began theMFA program in fiction writing atEmerson College, Boston, fall of ’09.

Carolina Alumn

i Review

Spring 2010 11

Creative Writing ProgramGreenlaw Hall CB 3520UNC-Chapel HillChapel Hill, NC 27599-3520

“There is a point at which honestybecomes mischief. That’s when yourwriting becomes irresistible.”

—Daphne Athas

For information on readings and upcoming events:

english.unc.edu/creative

Describe the World