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McFee honored for writing about Appalachian South

Posted on February 19, 2009March 16, 2009 by Staff

UNC creative writing professor and poet Michael McFee has won the 2009 James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South.

The Fellowship of Southern Writers gives the prize biennially to recognize a writer with a significant body of work about Appalachia.

McFee, director of the creative writing program in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, was born and raised in Western North Carolina and has written extensively about the mountains. His first book, Plain Air, was published more than 25 years ago.

McFee has written nine collections of poetry, most recently The Smallest Talk. His first collection of essays, The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, was published in 2006.

McFee, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNC, began teaching at his alma mater in 1990.

His awards include the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association (2006) and the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association (2001).

The late Still, the Kentucky writer often called the dean of Appalachian literature, won the first award from the fellowship for writing about the Appalachian South, in 1997. Other winners include Cold Mountain novelist Charles Frazier (1999), Western Carolina University professor and writer Ron Rash (2005) and Pamela Duncan (2007), formerly of UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
The award will be presented April 3 at the Arts and Education Council Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga, Tenn. — UNC News Services

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