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The Next Chapter in a Legacy

Wilma Dykeman Writers-in-Residence at UNC Asheville to be Housed in Writer’s Childhood Home

By UNC Asheville

October 27^th, 2020

The latest residence for UNC Asheville is a few miles up the road from campus – an Arts and Crafts-style bungalow nestled in nearly a dozen acres of forest, with a creek running through the front yard.

“The house my father and mother built soon after they were married, in which I was born, and where we lived until I was six years old, was a log house sitting back from the road among thick pines. The creek for which the valley was named, Beaverdam, ran in front of it. It was a comfortable picturesque house, with a long porch running along the front and the length of one whole side. In front of the side entrance stood three dogwoods, beautiful in the spring, and at the front entrance stood the pines, beautiful in the winter…. This was a fine world for a child to know. It touched the imagination; in fact, it required the imagination.”

Those are the words of renowned author, actor and conservationist Wilma Dykeman (1920-2006) in her posthumous memoir Family of the Earth, which was discovered and published by her son James “Jim” Stokely III in 2006. Now a decade after his mother’s death, Stokely and his wife Anne, along with philanthropist Ellen Carr, have partnered with UNC Asheville to open the doors of the house to the next generation of writers.

The Dykeman house at 189 Lynn Cove Road in Asheville is being donated to UNC Asheville for the purpose of housing the new Wilma Dykeman Writers-in-Residence Program. Carr’s gift is made in collaboration with the Wilma Dykeman Legacy (WDL), of which she is a board member and Stokely is founder and president. The gifted house and property is subject to a Conservation Easement through RiverLink and Historical Preservation Easement through the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County.

“The Wilma Dykeman Legacy, a tax-exempt public charity, grew out of our desire to sustain Wilma’s core values, of environmental integrity, social justice, and the power of the written and spoken word. Since 2012, the Legacy has produced discussions, lectures, books and programs in support of Wilma’s values. The Wilma Dykeman Writers-in-Residence Program will be a bright star in that constellation,” said Jim Stokely

Reaching for the Stars

The program will also be a shining connection for campus and the Asheville community, with an opportunity to write the next chapter in its storied history.

“For a very long time, Asheville has been a writer’s city. We’ve been a place where writers collaborate, compete, read each other’s works, provide critiques, and we are a place of education about writing, its meaning, its purpose, and the steadfast nature of the written word in our cultural life,” said UNC Asheville Chancellor Nancy J. Cable. “The writers-in-residence will hail from across the nation, and eventually perhaps even from around the globe. And it’s not just seasoned writers who will be our writers-in-residence, like our very own Wiley Cash [alumnus and writer-in-residence], who is one of the best-known Southern Appalachian writers in the world, but the program also will feature fellowships for emerging writers, and young writers not just on our campus but across this region. We’re most particularly excited about the opportunity to have camps and summer conferences that promote writing here.”

While the details are still being determined, writers might stay for an entire semester to teach courses at UNC Asheville and engage the community in master classes and readers, or may be invited for a writers’ conference or a short stay for a week or weekend. They could write fiction or non-fiction and draw inspiration from a variety of subjects.

“Very much in the spirit of Wilma Dykeman, the program will look to a broad range of disciplines and interests, honoring her life, work and activism, engaging the disciplines of economics, English, creative writing, environmental studies, climate, gender and women’s studies, biology, history, philosophy and likely more,” said UNC Asheville Provost Kai Campbell.

The program will be overseen by an advisory board, a collaboration between the University, Wilma Dykeman Legacy, RiverLink and community partners, with details about an application process or nomination and selection announced in the coming months.

“Wilma was interdisciplinary, just like UNCA and its students strive to be, and that’s our dream for the program based in her childhood home,” said Carr. “In a world that seems to grow more polarized and pigeonholed by the hour, we need thoughtful, creative, interdisciplinary response to problems that don’t fit neatly into a box. It’s no longer enough to write about climate change – we need writers who cross disciplines to make connections between the impact of climate change on impoverished communities in Western North Carolina.”

The easements will also sustain the property for the future, including scientific study and solutions.

“We see this property as a guiding light for growing a much-needed capacity at RiverLink and in our community and individuals to take actions to recognize the environment," said RiverLink Executive Director Garrett Artz.

“We hope there will be many writers who will be inspired to use the pen as the sword to carry forward some of her ideas.”

A Natural Setting for Writers

The new Wilma Dykeman Writers-in-Residence at UNC Asheville program will “support both the craft of writing and the interdisciplinary topics of enduring interest to Wilma Dykeman during her lifetime, including but not limited to the environment, social change, human relations, economics, biology, civil discourse, racial justice and women’s rights,” according to the memorandum of understanding between the WDL and the University. It is expected that the new Writer-in-Residence will live in and work from the house, which has been largely unchanged since Dykeman’s death, with her furniture, typewriter and other objects remaining as inspirational reminders of her life and legacy.

“The home and land is a tangible connection to Wilma Dykeman’s legacy, and by preserving it and creating a writers-in-residence program, people will be able to experience and understand what she created, and the sense of place creates a natural setting for writers to immerse themselves in their work,” said Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County Executive Director Jessie Landl.

“The historic integrity of the house and the surrounding property effortlessly tells the story of a woman passionate about a place, the environment, her family and her craft.”

UNC Asheville also plans to find ways for the public to experience the land, the beauty and the historical significance of the place. The home is large enough for a writer’s family to reside and might host multiple writers for a conference or short stay. It will be the home base for writers to connect with classes on campus as well as community readings and lectures. As such, it exemplifies Dykeman’s experience as an educator as well as an author.

Dykeman graduated in 1938 from Asheville-Biltmore College – the two-year junior college that grew to become UNC Asheville – and she then graduated from Northwestern University. With family roots in both Western North Carolina and Tennessee, she taught creative writing and Appalachian literature at the University of Tennessee and served as Tennessee’s state historian for more than 20 years. She also served on the boards of Berea College and UNC Asheville. She was the author of 15 non-fiction books and three novels, including The Tall Woman (1962), the tale of a mountain woman who works to bring her community together after the Civil War, which sold more than 200,000 copies.

“It seems very apt that Wilma Dykeman’s home will not become a time capsule, but instead a place to inspire writers, to nurture their careers, a place that will invest in the creation of more great literature from and about our region,” said Western North Carolina Historical Association Executive Director Anne Chesky Smith.

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