Michael McFee

Michael McFee is a poet and essayist from Asheville, North Carolina.

Career Michael McFee was born in 1954 in Asheville, North Carolina. He earned his B.A. (1976) and M.A. (1978) from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He left graduate school to work a variety of jobs — editorial assistant, librarian, and freelance journalist among them — while he completed his first book. After it was published, he taught part-time at N.C. State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In the late 1980s, McFee was poet-in-residence at Cornell University and also at Lawrence University. He began teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990, where he is now Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program. In 2018, McFee was awarded the North Carolina Award for literature, the state's highest civilian honor.

Writings Much of McFee's work deals with his native North Carolina mountains. His book of poems Earthly was co-winner of the Roanoake-Chowan Award for Poetry from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society and was an honorable mention for the Poets' Prize; his next collection, Shinemaster, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association.