Join The New York Times best-selling author and North Carolina native Wiley Cash as he highlights great writers across the state and their work each month. Listen in on conversations between Cash and his author friends as they discuss how North Carolina inspires them on the Our State Book Club podcast.
Even before enrolling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bland Simpson felt a deep connection to the school. As a matter of fact, he once thought his grandfather owned it.
“My grandfather was superintendent of construction at the university for the builder who held the contracts during the building boom of the 1920s and early ’30s,” Simpson says. “And when I was really little, he would take me for walks on the campus, and he talked about the university’s buildings with such familiarity that I thought he owned them.”
While Simpson’s grandfather didn’t own any of the buildings on campus, he did oversee the construction of Wilson Library, the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower, and Kenan Stadium.
Simpson’s mother had grown up in Chapel Hill, and after she and Simpson’s father divorced in 1959, she returned there from Elizabeth City, a 10-year-old Simpson and his two sisters in tow.
“For nearly my entire life, I’ve been walking through and inhabiting the world that my grandfather had a great deal to do with,” he says now. “It’s been a dreamlike experience.”
After Simpson enrolled at UNC, he encountered another student strumming a guitar and singing an anti-war ballad. The student’s name was Jim Wann, and although neither young man knew it then, their musical collaborations would one day take them all the way to New York City.
During his sophomore year as a student-custodian at University United Methodist Church, Simpson made a habit of playing one of the pianos there. Soon, he was playing music with others and even went on a pilgrimage to meet Bob Dylan in Woodstock, New York.
illustration by Andrea Cheung
In 1971, amid the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Simpson landed a songwriting contract with Dylan’s manager, dropped out of college, and released Simpson with Columbia Records in 1971.
When he returned to Chapel Hill only a few years later, Simpson began collaborating with his old friend Jim Wann, and the two wrote the musical Diamond Studs: The Life of Jesse James. More music, productions, and collaborations followed, and Simpson found himself worn out.
“After about four years of highly collaborative stuff, I thought I’d better sit down and write something on my own,” he says.
Simpson turned to fiction and wrote about what he knew best. Heart of the Country: A Novel of Southern Music was published in 1983. Soon after, UNC professor and beloved author Max Steel reached out, telling Simpson, “Now that you’ve got a book, I can hire you.”
Over the years, Simpson has published many more books including North Carolina: Land of Water, Land of Sky and The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir.
And the music has continued, too. He’s collaborated with countless musicians and writers, including the late writer and director Sam Shepard on the films Far North and Silent Tongue. Simpson joined the Red Clay Ramblers in 1986, and their show Fool Moon won a Tony Award in 1990.
Last December, Simpson retired from teaching at his alma mater as the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing. His 40-year tenure, he likes to note, amounts to 80 semesters of teaching.
“It’s been a dream,” he repeats. But the dream hasn’t ended, and Simpson is still writing from Chapel Hill, not far from the university where it all began.
photograph by Matt Hulsman
Some of America’s best-known nature writers are deeply associated with the places that become their subjects, but Henry David Thoreau only spent two years on Walden Pond, and Edward Abbey was solitary in the desert only for a short time. What would it mean for a writer to document a place after living there for almost 50 years? This question is answered in Bland Simpson’s Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir. In this story of a place, Simpson makes use of the talents for which he is best known. He observes with a naturalist’s eye, spins yarn with a storyteller’s knack for narrative, and writes prose with a rhythm hewn from years as one of Chapel Hill’s most beloved musicians. This is a story that reveals as much about its teller’s heart as it does about the place he loves.
More to Explore: Hear Bland Simpson in new episodes out April 1 and 15. Listen at ourstate.com/book-club-podcasts.
print it
Tucked into a historic neighborhood, a backyard in Forsyth County holds hundreds of Southern wildflowers collected by one wild flower woman.
John Champlin has traveled across the state — and the nation — in search of hard-to-find spots that serve an unforgettable hot dog. After 11 years, what he’s discovered goes way beyond the bun.
In the early 20th century, textile mill owners sponsored baseball teams, providing entertainment for their employees and nurturing a passion for the game that’s been handed down through generations of North Carolinians.
Our writer reflects on where his love of vinyl began, and how the snap, crackle, and pop of a needle sliding across a turntable will always satisfy his soul.
