As readers across America know by now, North Carolina has produced a remarkable number of talented fiction writers in recent years. This anthology collects twenty-five short stories, all published within the past decade and a half, by some of the best of those writers. This Is Where We Live showcases a rising generation of North Carolina authors whose work reflects the fast-changing realities of the state's landscape, culture, and people. Their roots may be southern, but their words will resonate with anyone anywhere who appreciates first-rate fiction. A broad and balanced collection, This Is Where We Live offers something for everyone. Though the stories range widely in setting, character, tone, and even form--from "short shorts" to novellas--they are united by the skill with which they are written. In short, the book offers powerful confirmation that North Carolina's literary culture continues to flourish. The contributors are Ellyn Bache, Sarah Dessen, Tony Earley, Candace Flynt, Philip Gerard, Marianne Gingher, Tom Hawkins, John Holman, John Kessel, Peter Makuck, Melissa Malouf, Heather Ross Miller, Ruth Moose, Lawrence Naumoff, Jennifer Offill, Michael Parker, P. B. Parris, Dale Ray Phillips, Joe Ashby Porter, Ron Rash, June Spence, Peter Turchi, Daniel Wallace, Luke Whisnant, and Marly Youmans. Their work has appeared regularly in such publications as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and the Oxford American.

This Is Where We Live: Short Stories by 25 Contemporary North Carolina Writers

Literature & Fiction

McFee, Michael

United States

The University of North Carolina Press

Michael McFee's new book takes its title from the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." All of us have appointed rounds in our lives--essential things we are given to do and must try to complete, whatever the inner or outer weather, whenever the time of day or night, however we may approach those duties. This lively and wide-ranging collection of fifty essays--many of them pointed, a page or so, in the playful manner of Robert Francis and THE SATIRICAL ROGUE ON POETRY, and others rolling on for much longer--addresses McFee's appointed rounds, subjects he has been thinking and caring about for decades: books, his native Western North Carolina mountains, writing, reading, editing, teaching, and, as the title suggests, the daily mail. It includes pieces on "My Inner Hillbilly" and Appalachia, on "Authors' Photos" and "Blurbs" and other parts of the physical book, on "My New Yorker" and contemporary literary culture, on "Poets as Novelists" and "Marginalia" and being a writer, on a teacher's "Gradebook" and "The Blackboard," and on authorial matters like "Voice," "Audience," and "Immortality." The prose explorations in APPOINTED ROUNDS, like McFee's poems, are meant as appreciations, paying close attention to things that have mattered to him (and many others), savoring their details while exploring their larger design, and saving his versions of them even as they may change or fade or disappear altogether.

Appointed Rounds

Essays & Correspondence

Mercer University Press

For over three decades, Michael McFee has been, in the words of one critic, "putting together a body of work that few poets anywhere, of any age, can match for its poise, its wit and metaphorical power, its accessibility and depth of feeling." That Was Oasis, McFee's eighth full-length book of poetry, is a collection of spirited and diverse elegies. Its poems pay inventive attention to the overlooked or underappreciated, to such subjects as saltines, holding hands, killing a copperhead with a hoe, the word "bunk," bald spots, the young Thelonious Monk, and a minor-league baseball park in Asheville, North Carolina―all of which, seen in the right light, can become unexpected oases in the quotidian.

That Was Oasis (Carnegie Mellon Poetry (Paperback))

Poetry

Carnegie-Mellon University Press

A Long Time to Be Gone (Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series)

Poems deal with childhood, memories, and the past

Sad Girl Sitting on a Running Board

Gnomon Press

To See

North Carolina Wesleyan

The Napkin Manuscripts is a collection of twenty-two engaging prose pieces written over the past several decades by Michael McFee – poet, essayist, editor, and teacher. Taken together, they constitute a wide-ranging exploration of what working writers do, how they do it, and what it means. The book is divided into four parts: Section one is composed of personal essays, and is rooted in the landscape and culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where the author grew up and where he often returns for inspiration.Section two gathers essays about the literary life and writing, among them pieces on editing, on teaching, on memorizing poetry, on rejection slips, on typewriters, and on becoming and being a writer.Section three collects seven essays about individual Appalachian writers, among them Fred Chappell, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and Robert Morgan.Section four consists of a public interview conducted at the Michael McFee Literary Festival at Emory &amp; Henry College a few years ago, and recapitulates many of the book’s topics in lively conversational form. The Napkin Manuscripts will appeal to anyone with a connection to Appalachia and the South; to readers interested in contemporary poetry and literature; and to teachers, writers, and students of poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction.

The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, With a Foreword by Doris Betts

Univ Tennessee Press

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Books by McFee, Michael