Clyde Edgerton

professor
Kenan Hall 1224 | edgertonc@uncw.edu
www.clydeedgerton.com

Background

PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, curriculum and instruction, 1977
MAT, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, English education, 1972
BA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, English education, 1966

Publications

The Night Train
The Bible Salesman
Solo: My Adventures in the Air (Memoir)
Lunch at the Piccadilly: A Novel
Where Trouble Sleeps
In Memory of Junior
Redeye: A Western
Killer Diller
The Floatplane Notebooks
Walking Across Egypt
Raney

Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship
Lyndhurst Fellowship
Five New York Times Notable Book awards
North Carolina Award for Literature
Membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers

On Teaching

My definition of teaching is this: “Teaching is the act of inducing students to behave in ways assumed to lead to learning.” I believe students in our MFA program should think about and play with this definition as many of them will become teachers, teaching students with varying levels of motivation and curiosity. Additionally, our program can allow students to save time—by that I mean learn their craft more quickly than they could without the program. We have a very strong faculty. I believe talking about writing with faculty and with other motivated students can allow students to become confident in their beliefs about why and how they must write. I enjoy workshopping, and I encourage students to accept no advice that doesn’t make sense to them, to try to observe their world as if never seen, to cause the reader to SEE, and to avoid adverbs when possible.

Download an excerpt of Clyde Edgerton's work (PDF).

Interview with Clyde from Image

Videos

On book trailers
Tellin' Stories (reading and musical performance)
Interview about The Night Train on NC Bookwatch