SOUTHERN PINES — Lumberton native and award-winning author Jill McCorkle has added another happy chapter to her life’s story, and credits teachers from her childhood for her literary successes of today.
“I think what inspired me so much as a young writer was having these people in my life who have accomplished these things that I would aspire to,” McCorkle said. “They had written books and yet they were right there in their offices ready to talk to you.”
McCorkle now officially stands among the top literary figures in North Carolina, having been inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame on Oct. 7 during a ceremony at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines. She learned of the honor in January, and said it was an exciting time leading up to the event.
“It is a great honor,” McCorkle said. “I have been there in the past to watch mentors of mine and people who really have influenced me.”
She joined four other inductees. They are novelist Randall Kenan, a Duplin County native; James Clark Jr., a professor of literary history and native of Warren County; the late Penelope Niven, a biographer from Union County; and Marsha White Warren, a poet and longtime director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network.
McCorkle already was familiar with the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, which was founded by Sam Regan in 1996 and includes several of her friends and colleagues. She introduced novelist and short story writer Lee Smith to the Hall of Fame during the 2008 ceremony. Smith also was one of McCorkle’s college teachers.
McCorkle joins the late journalist Joseph Mitchell and poet James Ephraim McGirt as the three Robeson County natives in the Hall of Fame. Other members with Robeson County connections include poet John Charles McNeill and journalist Tom Wicker, who wrote for The Robesonian and the New York Times.
“I was in wonderful company,” McCorkle said. “It was just really an honor to have been included among so many people in this state who have made a difference in the literary community.
“Coming from different places and yet what we all share and have in common is a love of the written word and the desire to be a part of this state’s literary community.”
McCorkle has the distinction of having her first two novels published on the same day in 1984. Since then she has published four more novels and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books, while three of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories anthologies.
McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
She has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts University, and Brandeis University, where she was the Fannie Hurst Visiting Writer. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard for five years, where she also served as the Creative Writing chairperson.
McCorkle said she carries memories of Lumberton wherever she goes, and they continue to influence her writing
“North Carolina is home for me, and even though I have lived elsewhere, this state has always informed my writing life,” McCorkle said. “Perhaps it is because I am always reaching back to my first awareness of wanting to write and those childhood memories lead me straight to my playhouse in the backyard of my childhood home in Lumberton.”
McCorkle describes that playhouse as a crate that housed a knitting machine.
“Every workspace I have ever had has been my attempt to recreate that six-by-six box, and when I’m there I automatically visualize all that surrounds me: my hometown, the Lumber River, the ocean just a little over an hour away,” she said.
She currently teaches creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at N.C. State University and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She lives with her husband, photographer Tom Rankin, in Hillsborough and hopes to inspire aspiring writers by being the mentor her teachers were for her.
“I would encourage people by saying it’s never too soon to start thinking about what you want to do and pursuing those dreams because it really is a progression step by step,” McCorkle said.
Fans can expect to see a new work by McCorkle in the year 2020, a book to be titled “Hieroglyphics.”
