Tony Abbott

Thanks to North Carolina Writers Conference for this report.

Anthony S. Abbott, professor emeritus of English at Davidson College, was the honoree at this year’s North Carolina Writers Conference (NCWC) meeting July 25–26 in Hickory. More than a hundred North Carolina writers gathered to pay tribute to Mr. Abbott for his writing, teaching, and multifaceted service to North Carolina’s literary community.

During the meeting, Mr. Abbott read selections from his award-winning writing and received accolades during a banquet tribute emceed by Marsha Warren, Literary Executor and former Executive Director of the Paul Green Foundation.

Those fêting Mr. Abbott included Ronald Bayes, of St. Andrews College; Janice Fuller, of Catawba College; and Joseph Bathanti, of Appalachian State University. All three are professors of English and distinguished North Carolina authors. Ms. Warren also shared written tributes from novelist Lee Smith, as well as novelist and poet Robert Morgan

The banquet was the grand finale of a meeting in which about a dozen writers and literary leaders discussed their most recent work and reflected on their craft and on North Carolina’s literary culture. Sharon A. Sharp, a poet and book artist, served as chair of the 2008 meeting, along with the other officers, poets Susan Meyers and Sally Logan.

A professor of English at Davidson since 1964, Abbott served as chair of the department from 1989 to 1996. He is the author of four poetry collections: “The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat,” “A Small Thing Like a Breath,” “The Search for Wonder in the Cradle of the World,” and “The Man Who.” His novels include “Leaving Maggie Hope” and “The Three Great Secret Things.”

Among the many awards for his writing are a Pulitzer Prize nomination for The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat, the Novello Award and ForeWord Magazine’s Gold Award for Literary Fiction for Leaving Maggie Hope, and the North Carolina Poetry Council’s Oscar Arnold Young Award for The Man Who, selected as 2005’s best book of poems by a North Carolinian.

Abbott is past-president of the Charlotte Writers Club and the North Carolina Writers’ Network and also past chair of the NCWC. In 1978 he was a William Atherton Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Between 1985 and 1992 he served on the Governor’s Committee on the North Carolina Awards. In 1996 he was honored by St. Andrews College with the Sam Ragan Award for his writing and his service to the literary community of North Carolina. Abbott was Lenoir-Rhyne College’s Writer-in-Residence for the 2007 spring semester, and in March 2008 he received Central Piedmont Community College’s Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts.

The NCWC began in Manteo in 1950 when a group of North Carolina writers assembled to help publicize The Lost Colony, Paul Green’s outdoor drama. This gathering proved so successful that the group pledged to meet annually thereafter, and 43 prominent writers worked to create the NCWC. Since then, the organization has met annually in late July at various locations throughout the state.

In 1977 the NCWC began honoring a member each year at its Saturday night banquet. Abbott joins a list including, among others, Paul Green, Jonathan and Lucy Daniels, Thad Stem Jr., Frances Gray Patton, Manly Wade Wellman, Sam Ragan, Doris Betts, Ronald Bayes, Richard Walser, Reynolds Price, Betty Hodges, Fred Chappell, Burke Davis, Wilma Dykeman, John Ehle, H.G. Jones, John Foster West, Daphne Athas, Glen Rounds, John Hope Franklin, Heather Ross Miller, Margaret Maron, and James Applewhite.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE

Jan. 25, 2008, “4-minute interview: Tony Abbott,” an audio interview with Mr. Abbott, talking about his writing, Davidson and his novel “The Three Great Secret Things.”