Clyde edgerton wilmington nc restaurants
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Clyde Edgerton Signs Off from UNCW
After a storied 25 years, Kenan Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing Clyde Edgerton has officially retired from UNCW. His retirement was honored at the UNCW Department of Creative Writing’s end of semester reception in April.
Creative writing professor and chair Mark Cox said of his colleague:
“One of the founding members of our department, he has achieved legendary status as a writer and teacher. Certainly, in all my nearly 40 years of teaching, I know of no colleague who cared more about their teaching than Clyde. As a writer, he has been a superb model for our students, not only because of his own practice, but also because of his important and timely activism within the larger Wilmington community. Clyde, we will greatly miss having you in our hallways and classrooms.”
Author, educator, artist, musician and pilot, Edgerton has delighted readers and fans through readings and appearances in and out
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North Carolina’s Old Books
I can think of at least two ways to use a bookstore (that place where you go to buy those things made of paper, ink, cloth, and cardboard—bound with glue):
1) As a place to buy a popular book you know you want. In that case, you may choose to go into a chain bookstore, where a book published by a major book publisher in the last few weeks or one that’s been a big seller over the last few years will be prominently displayed in a Sam’s Club–size room.
2) As a place to buy the above book, or a new or old book that you didn’t know you wanted. Old Books on Front Street, in my hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, is such a place. It’s run by writer-reader Gwenyfar Rohler, who, it turns out, reads about a book a day and has a novel on the way. When I walk into her store, I get a feeling that the store somehow fits me like loose, very soft blue jeans and a warm flannel shirt on a cool day.
When I walk into a number one bookstore, it fits lik
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Clyde Edgerton’s Airborne Misadventures
My dream to become a pilot came true in 1966, at the beginning of a five-year stint in the air force. I was twenty-two. Two decades later, I kept the pilot dream alive by buying a 1946 Piper taildragger that I named Annabelle.
During all my airplane journeys in Annabelle, I got “lost bad” only three times.
My original “lost bad” experience happened way back when I was a college ROTC cadet, flying a Piper Cherokee 140, a small civilian aircraft. My instructor, Mr. Keller, an understated and calm man, sent me off on my first solo cross-country flight (not technically across the country—an aviation term for a flight between two airports more than fifty nautical miles apart). The journey had three legs—from my home base of Raleigh-Durham (not yet international) Airport in North Carolina to a small airfield near Fayetteville where I’d land, then on to a larger airfield in Wilmington, and then back home. For navigation, I would be using onl