The University of North Carolina Wilmington Foundation Board hosted a special spotlight event on Thursday, November 14, featuring the UNCW Department of Creative Writing and award-winning faculty members Jason Mott '06, '08M and Emily Smith '06M.
Mott, an Associate Professor and acclaimed author, and Smith, an Associate Professor and Director of the UNCW Publishing Laboratory, are both alumni of the department’s graduate program. They reflected on their student experiences at UNCW – emphasizing the impact that faculty mentors, staff support, and practical, educational and professional opportunities had on them – as well the successes both have had in the literary world since leaving the UNCW nest. Following in the footsteps of UNCW faculty and staff who impacted them, both have come full circle and now serve as UNCW faculty in the Creative Writing program – inspiring and guiding the next generation of influential Seahawk writers.
“This is a program that redirects people’s lives and changes outcomes,” said Mott, the bestselling author of four novels – The Returned, The Wonder of All Things, The Crossing and Hell of A Book – who has received a number of awards including an Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist selection, a Carnegie Medals For Excellence in Fiction Longlist selection, a Chatauqua Prize Finalist, a Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist selection and the National Book Award for Fiction.
UNCW gave me an option that has redirected me to international acclaim – it is a rare and beautiful thing." - Jason Mott '06, '08M
Led by Chair Mark Cox, the Department of Creative Writing is housed in the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts (CHSSA) – UNCW’s newest college formed in 2023 under the leadership of Founding Dean Stephanie Caulder. “Our Creative Writing department sets a really high literary bar but also stresses the practical applications of their craft and that’s what has established it as a local program with a national impact,” said Caulder.
“This department has created authors,” said Mott, sharing the impacts made on him by notable UNCW faculty including former Poetry Professor Lavonne Adams ’86, ’92M, ’99M; the late Philip Gerard; Mark Cox, current Creative Writing Department Chair and Professor; and David Gessner, current Editor-in-Chief of Ecotone and Professor. “It has created a culture that stretches so far that it breaks international waters.”
The program boasts 18 experienced, well-published faculty writers and editors; award-winning student-staffed journals, Chautauqua and Ecotone; micro-press book imprint, Lookout Books, at Ecotone Lookout; creative careers and prestigious publications of UNCW students and alumni; and the extraordinary resources of the UNCW Publishing Laboratory.
“Labs are not just for the sciences,” said Smith. “There are all kinds of creative labs here where we’re teaching students to be innovators and creators, to learn how to make decisions, to be engaged, to be founders, to go out into the world and make. We need problem solvers and communicators and those are all things that we’re teaching in our program.”
According to CHSSA, the Publishing Laboratory is integral to the Department of Creative Writing. It incorporates into the apprenticeship of creative writers an applied learning experience in the process by which literary manuscripts, including their own, are edited and designed into books and published to a wide audience of readers.
“Students are coming to UNCW because they want to study not just writing — they want to study writing and where it overlaps with the publishing ecosystem. They want to be editors and be the founders of magazines and new publishing houses,” said Smith of the Publishing Laboratory, which is one of the only publishing houses that lives under the auspices of a creative writing department.
Established in 2000, under the visionary guidance of former CEO of HarperCollins Canada and distinguished visiting professor Stanley Colbert, the Publishing Laboratory serves as both a classroom for graduate and undergraduate students and a fully functioning small press that issues original works under its own name. Lookout Books was established in 2009, with its first book – Binocular Vision, a book of stories by Edith Pearlman, soon to follow in 2011. The book made history as the first from a debut press to be a finalist for all four of the major literary awards – the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Story Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.
Learn more about CHSSA programs and the Department of Creative Writing at uncw.edu/chssa.
The UNCW Alumni Association and philanthropy boards host a number of special events throughout the year that spotlight our students, faculty and programs. Visit alumni.uncw.edu to learn more about upcoming events, opportunities to get involved and more.