Restrictions to Access

This collection contains additional materials that are not processed and are currently not available to researchers. For information about access to these materials, contact Research and Instructional Services staff. Please be advised that preparing unprocessed materials for access can be a lengthy process.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Michael McFee Papers #5099, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from Michael McFee of Durham, N.C., in August 2002 (Acc. 99295).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American poetry--North Carolina--20th century.
• Ammons, A. R., 1926- .
• Authors, American--North Carolina--20th century
• Betts, Doris.
• Chappell, Fred, 1936- .
• McFee, Michael.
• North Carolina--Poetry.
• Poets, American--North Carolina--20th century.

• A. R. Ammons Papers (#4517)
• Doris Betts Papers (#4695-z)

Michael McFee was born in Asheville, N.C., on 4 June 1954 andgrew up in the small town of Arden in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He was graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with an A.B. in English with highest honors in creative writing. He received an M.A. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1978. McFee served as poetry editor for Carolina Quarterly while attending graduate school. After completing his degree, he became book editor for Spectator magazine in Raleigh, N.C., and book commentator for WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill. Throughout that time, McFee was writing poems and submitting them for publication in various magazines. Since the late 1970s, his work has appeared in journals such as Southern Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Atlantic Monthly.

McFee has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill since 1984. He started in that year as visiting lecturer in Creative Writing and, in 2002, became professor of English. He also served as visiting assistant professor of English at Cornell University and Lawrence University. During those two decades, he published six collections of poetry.

McFee has spent his professional career supporting and promoting North Carolina literature. He edited an anthology of contemporary North Carolina poetry in 1994 and compiled an anthology of short stories by North Carolina writers six years later. In 1996, McFee became coordinator of the Second Sunday Reading Series, a series started by author Doris Betts to bring writers with North Carolina roots to Chapel Hill.

McFee has won numerous awards and fellowships for teaching and writing, including a Discovery/ The Nation Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing. He lives in Durham, N.C.

The collection contains material related to North Carolina  poet  Michael McFee's writing, including drafts of poems and essays written between 1970 and 2002. Subjects of McFee's essays include writers A. R. Ammons, Doris Betts, and Fred Chappell. Material pertaining to McFee's published collections of poetry consists primarily of drafts, correspondence about publication matters, reviews and comments, and promotional material. Papers related to DoubleTake concern the selection of poems for publication in the magazine. Material from the Second Sunday Reading Series includes promotional pieces, drafts of reader introductions, and plans for the tenth anniversary celebration of the Series. Personal letters related to McFee's work as a poet and editor are scattered throughout the collection.