Clyde Edgerton | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 20, 1944 Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author and professor |
| Alma mater | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Notable awards | North Carolina Award (1997) |
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| clydeedgerton | |
Clyde Edgerton (born May 20, 1944) is an American author and academic from North Carolina. He has published a dozen books, most of them novels, three of which have been adapted for film. He was a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he taught creative writing for 26 years .
Edgerton was born in Durham, North Carolina on May 20, 1944. [1] His parents were Truma and Ernest Edgerton, who who came from families of cotton and tobacco farmers, respectively. [1] He grew up in Bethesda, Durham County, North Carolina was a fundamentalist Baptist. [2] [3] [4] His distant cousin is author Sylvia Wilkerson. [3]
In 1962 Edgerton enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, eventually graduating in English in 1966. [2] [1] During this time he was a student in the Air Force ROTC program where he learned to fly a small plane. [4] [1] After graduating, he entered the United States Air Force and served five years, from 1966 to 1971, as a fighter pilot in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. [5] [6] [2] [3]
After his time in service, Edgerton returned the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with Master's degree and Ph.D. in English education. [6] [3] While in graduate school, he taught English at his former high school. [1]
Edgerton became a teacher of English education at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. [7] [2] Because the college administration was offended by His fictional portrayal of Free Will Baptists in Raney, the novel led to a controversy that resulted in Edgerton's leaving the teaching staff at Campbell University. [7] [6] [3]
Edgerton then taught at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina. [6] Later, he taught and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. [6] He became a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 1998, where he taught creative writing for 26 years before retiring as the Kenan Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing in 2024. [2] [4] [6]
Edgerton decided to become a fiction writer on May 14, 1978 after watching Eudora Welty read a short story on public television. [2] He started out writing short stories while teaching at Campbell University. [8] [2]
Edgerton's first novel, Raney, the plot of which revolves around the marriage of a Free Will Baptist and an Episcopalian, was published in 1985. [7] [6] His next novel, Walking Across Egypt, was published in 1987. [6] This was followed by The Floatplane Notebooks in 1988, Killer Diller in 1991, In Memory of Junior in 1992, and Redeye: A Western in 1995. [6] Night Train, was published in 2011 and follows two friends—one White and one Black—in the segregated South of the 1960s. [9]
His novels Raney, Walking Across Egypt, and The Floatplane Notebooks were banned in some schools. [3]
In the later 1970s and 1980s, Edgerton lived in Apex, North Carolina. [5] He purchased a 1946 Piper Super Cruiser that he named "Annabelle" in 1989. [5] He crashed the airplane in January 1991. [5]
Edgerton is married and lives with his wife and their children in Wilmington, North Carolina. [3] He served as the chair of the Arts Council in Wilmington, North Carolina. [8] He is also a singer and songwriter. [3] [10] He plays the guitar, banjo, and piano. [3]
Three of Edgerton's novels have been adapted to film: [10]
One of Edgerton's novels was adapted into a play:
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