Lifetime Achievement Award Goes to Poet, Professor

Posted on Dec. 15, 2010

Michael McFee ’76, a poet and professor in Carolina’s English and comparative literature department, has received one of this year’s North Carolina book awards, the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for Literary Achievement.

The honor, which recognizes lifetime achievement, comes from the N.C. Literary and Historical Association. McFee, who also has a master’s degree from UNC, also directs Carolina’s creative writing program.

One of two videos from the Hutchins Lecture delivered by McFee is available online.

He has written nine poetry collections — including The Smallest Talk, Earthly Shinemaster and Colander — and edited volumes of North Carolina poetry and prose, including This Is Where We Live: Poems by Fifteen Contemporary North Carolina Poets.

McFee’s other honors include the 2009 James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South; 2006 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association; 2001 Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, also from the literary and historical association.

His work also has appeared in the Carolina Alumni Review. His cover story about Carolina’s columns, titled “Pillars of Wisdom,” appeared in the September/October 2008 issue, available online to Carolina Alumni members.

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