Author, UNC grad Clyde Edgerton honored with Wolfe Prize

Reading Emerson in tenth grade and “A Farewell to Arms” his sophomore year at UNC inspired Clyde Edgerton’s desire to study and teach English.

However, it wasn’t until he returned to UNC for graduate school and a Ph.D. program that he began secretly dreaming about becoming an author.

Hearing Eudora Welty read her short story “Why I Live at the P.O.” solidified Edgerton’s dream of writing.

“It changed my life,” he said.

“It’s what happens to people when they have religious experiences, and their lives are changed — a big kind of transformation.”

This transformation led to 10 novels, a book of advice, a memoir, short stories, essays, a Guggenheim fellowship and five novels recognized as notable books by The New York Times.

But he still remembers when Ehringhaus was the only tall building on campus and when the computer science building used an entire room for one computer.

Now, Edgerton has returned to UNC to be honored with the Thomas Wolfe Prize, an award sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature that recognizes contemporary writers with distinguished bodies of work and seeks to give the UNC community the opportunity to hear important writers of their time.

UNC English professor Randall Kenan said his North Carolina roots set Edgerton apart from other writers from his generation.

“He is through and through a North Carolinian,” Kenan said.

“I think of him as unafraid to tackle a lot of the social issues that a lot of writers shy away from — especially matters of race and class.”

Junior Austin Mathews, an English major, heard about the Thomas Wolfe Lecture through his creative writing class and hopes to attend the event.

“I love the Southern lit that I’ve read,” Mathews said.

“It’s like the intellectual from the viewpoint of the very uneducated.”

Although he has not read Edgerton’s work, Mathews said his interest in Southern literature and creative writing, as well as living in North Carolina his entire life, made him interested in the lecture.

However, Edgerton’s success was not obtained without perseverance.

“My stories were rejected 202 times before one was published,” Edgerton said.

While teaching creative writing at UNC-Wilmington, Edgerton said he gives advice in the classroom so he can make his students’ jobs a little easier.

And Edgerton has much advice to give, specifically regarding his first novel, “Raney.”

“It wasn’t really a novel until I put the serious stuff in,” he said.

“I realized my short stories were scenes, and I rely on what I’ve since found out through an interesting definition by Josephine Humphreys, and that is that ‘A novel is a series of scenes with meaning.’”

Edgerton also referred to Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s “Understanding Fiction” as his personal Bible. He said his sources for fiction came from three categories: He learned that observation was important; he learned that experience was important; but, most of all, he learned that experience was necessary for truthful stories.

Tonight’s lecture will be a chance to hear about Edgerton’s inspirations and trials, and how honored he is by the Thomas Wolfe Prize.

“It doesn’t get any better than when your friends, your peers or your students give you an award,” he said.

“The word ‘honor’ takes on a special meaning.”

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