31 Years at Nichols - Nichols School

Smith Visiting Fellow
Jill McCorkle Breathes
Life into Fiction
By Nina Barone
Jill McCorkle’s latest novel, “Life After Life,” is an engrossing story seen
through the eyes of its diverse cast of characters. With humor and hope
serving as anchors, the novel looks at life and its end from a vantage
point that is justifiably bleak at times, but always thoughtful. From
March 11-12, Nichols was fortunate to host Ms. McCorkle as its Smith
Visiting Fellow at the start of her national book tour. She visited Buffalo to
speak at Nichols, thanks to the Graham W. Smith ’48 Fund and
Larry Desautels, Upper School English teacher and Graham W. Smith ’48
Chair. The fund celebrates and promotes writing at Nichols by bringing
visiting writers to work with students.
Ms. McCorkle has the distinction of having
her first two novels published on the same
day in 1984. Since then, she has published
three other novels and four collections
of short stories. Five of Ms. McCorkle’s
books have been named New York Times
notable books, and she has received the
New England Booksellers Award, the
John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in
Literature and the North Carolina Award
for Literature. Her teaching career includes
time at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts and
Brandeis, where she was the Fannie Hurst
Visiting Writer; she also was a Briggs-
Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard
for five years and chaired Creative Writing.
Ms. McCorkle currently teaches Creative
Writing in the MFA Program at NC State
University and is a core faculty member of
the Bennington College Writing Seminars.
In addition to working with Upper
School students in English classes, Ms.
McCorkle addressed students, faculty and
staff at a special Upper School Morning
Meeting on Tuesday, March 12. Students
heard Ms. McCorkle read from “Life
After Life,” which the author described as
“very much a novel that depends on these
individual voices.” The story focuses on
the daily triumphs and challenges of the
residents and staff of Pine Haven Estates, a
retirement facility that is home to many of
Fulton, North Carolina’s older citizens. She
began with Abby, the youngest character
in the story, who reflects on her friends at
Pine Haven, her dog, her home life and her
parents’ seemingly inevitable divorce that’s
yet to be announced. In the candid voice
of a slightly wounded 12-year-old, Abby
muses about her mother’s shortcomings,
particularly her competitive nature and
shallow view of the world. She wishes her
mother wasn’t throwing her a 13th birthday
party with an idiotic theme—Former
First Ladies, as in Laura Bush and Hillary
Clinton—and that her dog, Dollbaby,
would return home. The dog’s recent
disappearance is extremely suspicious, with
her mother left looking rather shady. Part
best friend, part surrogate little sister, Abby
feels a terrible void without Dollbaby. “To
forget what it feels like to be an adolescent
is to forget what it feels like to feel,” the
author said of writing Abby.
Next, Ms. McCorkle introduced Abby’s
best (human) friend, Sadie Randolph, a
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Spring/Summer 2013
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