News Release

Local angle: Raleigh

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Thomas Wolfe Scholarship
goes to Nate Lumpkin

CHAPEL HILL - Freshman Nathaniel "Nate" Lumpkin of Raleigh has been awarded the fifth Thomas Wolfe Scholarship in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The scholarship, established in 2002, provides full financial support for four years at UNC. Candidates are chosen based on their written work, which can include poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction and drama. The winner is selected based on literary ability and artistic merit.

"Nate's fiction impressed us as being psychologically complex," said Marianne Gingher, associate professor of English and co-director of the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship program. "In all his writing, Nate seems intrigued by human relationships - how people take advantage of one another, how they mesh or don't mesh. His understanding of the human psyche and heart struck our committee as both smart and sophisticated."

Lumpkin, the son of Willis Lumpkin and Pamela Blizzard, graduated in May from Raleigh Charter High School. He counts honors English and creative writing courses and the philosophy club as influences on his writing.

He enjoys fiction writing, especially short stories, but says that "poetry is beginning to be a draw." He has his own blog and has written informal essays on it for more than two years.

"Creation for me is words, most holy, mysterious," Lumpkin wrote in his scholarship application essay. "I form them and coax them and bind them together, and they do what I ask them most of the time."

The scholarship honors author and UNC alumnus Thomas Wolfe, best known for his 1929 novel, "Look Homeward, Angel." Frank Borden Hanes Sr. of Winston-Salem, a novelist, poet and retired journalist who graduated from UNC in 1942, contributed $2 million to establish the scholarship. Hanes, who founded UNC's Arts and Sciences Foundation in 1975, has long supported faculty and programs in the literary arts.

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/Lumpkin_Nate2006ThomasWolfeScholar.JPG

College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Weaver Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu