Contact information:
Office:  216 Karpen Hall
Office Phone:  (828) 251-6579

Email:
cchadwick@unca.edu

Recent Classes:

Lang 120: Foundations of Academic Writing

Lit 241:     Introduction to Poetry

Lang 260: Introduction to Creative Writing

Lang 363: Fiction Writing Workshop

Lang 463: Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop

Lang 497: Senior Seminar in Creative Writing

MLA 500: Masters’ Program Introduction to Creative Writing

Only trouble is interesting in fiction. Janet Burroway

I create sympathy for my characters—then turn the monsters loose. Stephen King

 The very act of story telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy...We tell stories because we can’t help it.  We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify.  We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes.  We tell stories because they save us.

James Carroll

I have been teaching writing at UNCA since 1996. There is no better job for a novelist practicing a craft than to teach it. Even after all these years, my students continue to inspire the honing of my own skills, while they are learning and honing theirs. I have a fondness for teaching Freshman Composition, where I have the privilege to encounter students for all potential majors during their first and second semesters. I teach all levels of creative writing: Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction, Advanced Fiction, Senior Seminar in Creative Writing, Masters Program Creative Writing, as well as Lit 241 Introduction to Poetry - our pre-requisite for the major.  I advise senior undergraduates through their final creative writing and literature projects, and am currently directing a master's thesis through the MLA program.  I hold a BA in English from Norwich University, and both an MA in Literature and an MFA in Fiction from Goddard College.

I also host the annual Lit Club Halloween Party, where students and faculty, alike, gather in my home dressed as literary characters and try to guess each others' identity; now while this may sound tediously tedious and nerdy—never fear: we add to this some karaoke, a killer food spread, fire-pit, s'mores, guitars, and sing-a-longs. Arlo–ever-fetching. Drs Moseley, Gillum, and Ettari singing Mo-Town. Is your interest, piqued?

I began my writing career as a short story writer and essayist and have published in both genres, but it is my novel work that has captured my full attention for the last decade.  I am the author of Cat Rising, Girls With Hammers, and Babies, Bikes, and Broads, all Bywater Books publications. In 2004, Girls With Hammers was a selected feature in the Authors’ Arena at the Book Expo America Conference in Chicago, and nominated for both the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Associations’ Stonewall Literary Award, and was a finalist in the 2005 Golden Crown Literary Awards. Babies, Bikes, and Broads placed runner-up as the 2008 Bywater Fiction Prize awarded at Saints & Sinners Literary Conference in New Orleans in May 2008. I have recently shifted my novel-work to mainstream women's fiction and have recently agented my latest works, As the Table Turns and Then Came Jake.  I have many more stories in my head, and I’m occasionally afflicted by the notion that I may run out of life before I run out of stories and this only serves to make me type faster.