Randall Kenan receives
1998 Hobson Prize
Homecoming 1998
November 13 & 14
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Outstanding Southern novelist
Randall Kenan, whose portrayal of
the fictional town of Tim’s Creek is
often compared to William
Faulkner’s “litde postage stamp of
native soil” received the confer
ment of the Hobson Prize and
Medal on May 4.
Touching the medal draped
against his chest and recanting the
words of a favorite actress upon
receiving an academy award,
Kenan graciously chuckled and
declared, “You don’t know how
encouraging it is to feel one of
these things.” Charmed by his
disclosure, his audience laughed.
Humbly reminiscing about his
challenges, Kenan offered, “I was
born poor, illegitimate and black
in a place that makes Murfreesboro
look like a metropolis, with
literally all sorts of
odds and evens
against me. Through
work, faith and the
love and support of
my family and
teachers, many of
whom were educated
at places like
Chowan, I beat those
odds and wound up
at Chapel Hill where
I had a strange
encounter with
literature.
“Although I
probably should have
gone on and done
something useful,
like studied medicine
or physics as I
originally intended
to do, 1 decided to
become a writer. I don’t know if
what I have written has measured
up to what I wanted it to be, but
this certainly is encouraging me
that I am at least on the right
track.”
There is no doubt that Kenan is
on the right track. He published
his first novel in 1989 at age 26
and acknowledged that A Visitation
of Spirits, which is steeped in the
landscape of tobacco firms,
backwoods churches, hillbilly
diners and a small-town high
school, was influenced by
the sermons, prayer
meetings and big family
dinners of his rural North
Carolina upbringing.
His collection of short
stories. Let the Dead Bury
Their Dead, soon fol
lowed. The collection was
nominated for the Los
Angeles Times Book Award
for Fiction, became a
fmalist for the National Book
Critics Circle Award and was
among The New York Times
Notable Books of 1992. The New
York Times Book Review read,
“Fiercely and relendessly, hilari
ously and sympathetically, Randall
Kenan unfolds layer upon layer of
the interlocked existences of his
Tim’s Creek citizens... he has
created, in a single obscure hamlet,
a deeply and peculiarly American
community, as memorable as any
in recent fiction.”
His latest work, Walking on
Water: In Search of Black America,
will be published by Alfred A,
Knopf, in 1999.
Born in Brooklyn, Kenan spent
his youth in the Duplin County
countryside. At seventeen, he left
Chinquapin for the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Enrolling to major in physics, he
graduated with a degree in English
after an interest in science fiction
led him to creative writing and “an
obsession with the written word.”
Kenan has won numerous
awards including the Sherwood
Anderson Award in 1995 and the
Whiting Writer’s Award in 1994.
He was named the Rene^ and
John Grisham Southern Writer-in
Residence at The
University of Missis
sippi in 1997 and was
selected as a
Guggenheim fellow in
1994. In addition to
serving on the faculty
at Sarah Lawrence
College, Columbia
University and Vassar
College, Kenan was
the first William
Blackburn Visiting
Professor of Creative
Writing at Duke
University in the fall of
1994 and the Edourd
Morot-Sir Visiting
Professor of Creative
Writing at his alma
mater in 1995. He has
also held the tide of
assistant editor at the
New York publishing house of
Alfred A. Knopf
Awarded annually to recognize
the distinguished achievement of a
person in the field of arts and
letters, the endowed program was
established at Chowan by the
Hobson Family Foundation of San
Francisco, Ca., as a memorial to
Mary Frances Hobson, a North
Carolina journalist and poet.
Kenan joins former Hobson Prize
recipients Kaye Gibbons, Mark
Richard and Jill McCorkle.
Friday
Braves Club Golf Tournament
Alumni Association Reception
Bonfire & Pep Rally
Saturday
Breakfast with Coaches & Players
Homecoming Parade & Alumni CoflFee
Annual Alumni Association Meeting
Picnic Lunch
Alumni & Friends Honoree Luncheon
Football - Braves vs. Guilford College
150th Anniversary Alumni Ball
Classes
Reunion
1963
35
1968
30
1972,1973,1974
25 & friends
1978
20
1983
15
1987. 1988,1989
10 & friends
1993
5
1996,1997,1998
Young 4CE
Watch your mail for final event schedule
and registration forms in mid-August.
For more information or to organize special
reunion activities for your class or group,
contact Charlie Aycock, Director of
Alumni Services at (252) 398-6266.
granting the library campus-wide access
The Friends of the Library Computerization Campaign
Committee and the many friends of Chowan are to be congratu
lated for their excellent response to the successful $250,000 fund
drive to equip and endow library automation. Members of the
committee are left to right (seated) Jack Hassell, Chair Betty
Moore, Honorary Chair Esther Whitaker; (standing) Henry
Pulliam, Bruce Pulliam, Alice Vann, Joan Horne, Sue Fairless,
and Braxton Britt. Not pictured are Honorary Chair Bruce
Whitaker, Katherine Allen, Wendy Barnes, Tom Caulkins,
Connie Hicks, Fran Minton and Carolyn Taylor.
To everyone who made the campaign a success ....
THANK YOU!
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