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Writer Jill McCorkle appears May 15
Writer Jill McCorkle of North Carolina will appear at The
Prizery on
May 15, at the annual Meet the Author Series, sponsored by the
Southern
Virginia Higher Education Center. McCorkle’s appearance is
planned for
7:30 p.m. There is no charge.
McCorkle, a native of Lumberton, N.C., has published five
novels, the
first when she was only 26 years old: The Cheer Leader, July
7th,
Tending to Virginia, Ferris Beach and Carolina Moon, plus three
collections of short fiction.
Magazines such as The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home
Journal,
Ploughshares and Best American Short Stories have published her
work,
and she has reviewed books for The New York Times Book Review
and The
Washington Post. McCorkle has taught writing at Harvard,
Bennington
College and UNC-Chapel Hill. She currently teaches at N.C. State
University.
What follows is a question-and-answer e-mail session with
McCorkle
conducted last week:
How much does the South, or your Southern childhood,
figure into your
work? Did it help bring the South into relief when you
lived OUTSIDE
the South, teaching at Tufts, Bennington, Harvard and
elsewhere?
My Southern childhood figures in a huge way. I feel I rely so
strongly
on a sense of place and of my own experience. The actual things
that
happen to my characters aren't necessarily based on fact, but
the time
and place are. I was strongly affected by the building of I-95
for
instance and it has become a kind of symbol in my work as a
bridge to
other places but also as a change to the small town isolation
that had
been there before. Living out of the South, made me aware of
all I had
taken for granted my whole life – the N.C. coast for instance –
the
food! The friendliness among strangers.
You’ve called yourself a humanist writer, a label you
prefer to
feminist writer. Can you elaborate on the distinction?
I say humanist because I don't think the desires of my
characters are
limited to women. I often have women narrators, yes, but I
think that
the desire to be understood and accepted is a universal
one. Those
basic emotions we all share are what stand to connect us in
literature
and in life without regard to gender or race or age, etc.
You were only 26 years old when you made publishing
history in 1984 by
having your first two novels published simultaneously. You
also took
awards at UNC as an undergraduate and at Hollins where you
earned an
MFA. Looking back, was that early acclaim a blessing?
The early acclaim was a great blessing for me because I was
someone who
could have easily been scared off. The encouragement I received
was a
great gift and yes, a blessing.
What’s your writing schedule like? How do your creative
ideas develop?
I write whenever I can, often just taking notes during busy
teaching
times and saving up for big chunks of time. I am always
thinking about
it. Ideas sometimes come out of nowhere – not whole or in any
kind of
meaningful way at all, but the tail of an idea and then I just
think
about it and all the possibilities. And I continue taking lots
of
notes. I write far more than I need.
How old are your children now? Are they writers?
My kids are almost 20 and 16. They both enjoy writing which
makes me
really happy – not so much with ambition in mind, but because I
see the
great gifts it brings to my students. Even people who don't go
on to
write and publish, learn so much about themselves and become
much
better readers by trying it out.
As a veteran teacher who's spent time at some prestigious
universities,
what’s your best advice to writing students (of any age)?
My advice to young writers: Write and write and write and read
all you
can. The more you write, the more you will write and that is
the best
way to learn – trial and error – getting comfortable on the
page.
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