CELEBRATING, FINALLY, THE 2020

North Carolina Literary

The induction ceremony for the 2020 inductees into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame was worth the wait for a safer time to gather to celebrate. October 16, 2022 was warm and clear in Southern Pines, NC, and the crowd sitting under the tent behind the Weymouth Center were in for a treat. The crowd enjoyed stirring speeches as Anthony Abbott and Max Steele were inducted posthumously. Two former North Carolina Poets Laureate spoke about and read from Abbott’s work. Steele was lauded by UNC Chapel Hill’s Director of the Creative Writing program, a position Steele held for twenty years. Carole Boston Weatherford was inducted in absentia by a writer influenced by her and then her work read by her son and daughter-in-law. Family members also inducted Charles Frazier (his daughter, also a writer) and Bland Simpson (his wife and collaborator).

“revered, inspirational, life-changing teacher”

Anthony Abbott

induction remarks by Joseph

Bathanti

Anthony S. Abbott graduated from Princeton, then Harvard, where he received his PhD, and, in 1964, joined the faculty at Davidson College. He was named Charles A. Dana Professor of English in 1990 and served as Department Chair from 1989 to 1996. Recipient of Davidson’s Thomas Jefferson Award and the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award, a revered, inspirational, life-changing teacher, he has launched scores of writers and scholars. I do not exaggerate when I say Tony Abbott remains a legend beloved at Davidson College and in the town of Davidson.

In 1976, I, and my not-yet-wife wife, Joan, arrived in North Carolina as VISTA Volunteers, assigned to the same prison project. My post was Huntersville Prison in North Mecklenburg County. Davidson College had a prisoner advocacy group, including Tony. He’d been collaborating with a prisoner named Vernon Rich on a series of columns for a small local newspaper. Tony was one of the very first people Joan and I met upon our arrival, and we place him among a handful of our dearest, oldest friends – and by extension his wife Susan, his sons, and his grandchildren. I lusted to be a writer, and Tony – already established among the

JOSEPH BATHANTI was Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 2012 to 2014 and the 2016 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. He is Professor of English and McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education and Writer-in-Residence of Appalachian State University’s Watauga