UNCW’s Clyde Edgerton to be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame

Kirsten Schimmoller | Contributing Writer

He can write and live in the unpredictable, UNC Wilmington’s creative writing professor and fiction author Clyde Edgerton said of himself.

“I have a sense of inhabiting an alternative universe where I’m intimately involved in the lives of fictional characters,” said Edgerton.

Edgerton has written 10 novels, including his first, “Raney,” a story that follows newlyweds during the 1970s, and has been adapted to theater and has been made into a movie. His other novels, “Walking Across Egypt” and “Killer Diller” have also been made into movies.

The North Carolina native and father of four will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, a group comprised of 57 writers including mystery writer Margaret Maron and the late poet Carl Sandburg.

Edgerton was an avid reader in high school who eventually started writing at the age of 33, but says his childhood cultivated the grounds for his writing career.

He grew up in a rural area of the small town Bethesda, N.C. surrounded by relatives who told stories. Edgerton was brought up on strong Christian values. The idea of sin – an immoral human act – intrigued him.

“Sin is more interesting than evil since it involves choice,” said Edgerton, echoing the words of writer Flannery O’Connor.

Human behavior is unpredictable. It is a notion that Edgerton embodies and incorporates into his novels.

“I hope some of my stories may have enabled, for some readers, a more robust embracing of uncertainty than was previously there for them” said Edgerton.

In fact, his writing is influenced by the unexpected.

“Experience and observation that seems puzzling or funny often leads to a creation of fictional characters and a story,” said Edgerton. “If something strikes me as interesting I, as a rule, don’t try to figure out why. I just start writing,” he later added.

It is his daily connection to human interaction that inspires him. “Finding anything which strikes me in real life and being able to accurately bring words to the page is what I’m after many times in writing,” Edgerton said.

For him, writing times vary and, sometimes, characters are created from imagination rather than reality. There is no rhythm or rules. Unpredictability may create writing content, but how to write and what to include depends on one person — the writer.

“We are each—because of our separate experiences, observations and imaginations—different from any other person who is, will be, or has been,” Edgerton said.

His suggestion: “Do not follow advice that makes no sense to you.”

Edgerton will be honored at The Boyde House in Southern Pines, N.C. on Oct. 16, at the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.