NC writer Randall Kenan, a voice of Southern literature, dies at 57

Award-winning North Carolina writer Randall Kenan, the unapologetically Black, gay Southerner who used all his identities to tell the stories only he could tell, has died. He was 57 and had lived in Hillsborough.

Kenan’s first novel, “A Visitation of Spirits” in 1989, was followed by a 1992 short story collection, “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.” That collection was nominated for The Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was one of The New York Times Notable Books of 1992.

Kenan’s most recent collection, “If I Had Two Wings,” was published this month. The story returns to the region of his first two books, the fictional town inspired by the Duplin County home where he was raised by three women. A story from that new work called “God’s Gonna Trouble the Water or, Where Is Marisol?,” is featured on the Oprah Magazine website.

He also just published the essay, “Letter from North Carolina: Learning from Ghosts of the Civil War,” about Chapel Hill in “the season for toppling Confederate monuments” on Aug. 18.

Hillsborough author Lee Smith said Kenan “was one of America’s best short story writers. He took a lot from old Black folk tales and passed it down… I think he owes a lot to the Southern oral tradition and the church.”

Smith recalled an essay she edited in “Mothers and Strangers: Essays on Motherhood from the New South” published by UNC Press. In it, Kenan described the women who raised him: One was a great aunt, another a cousin and the third was a family friend whose “hugs were crushing, enveloping as genuine as heavy rain,” he wrote.

“Those women were just waiting for him,” Smith says. “One was a great cook, another one a lover of books. He was deeply loved by the whole community.”

Smith added that Kenan “had this side that was deeply civic. He was bearing witness… he’s been bearing witness all the time.”

On Saturday, Ed Southern, the executive director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, was among those still trying to process Kenan’s death. The collection of mourners included fellow writers, friends, colleagues, students who found inspiration in his classroom and those who valued his literary voice as a Black gay writer. He was an expert on James Baldwin, another Black gay writer who Kenan looked up to.

“He probably has as significant of an impact of any North Carolina writer of the last 40 or 50 years,” Southern said. “He had a national and international reputation and audience. He remained deeply rooted in North Carolina.”

Southern added that Kenan was “unfailingly generous” to aspiring writers. “There are writers across the country, who are at work today because of his teaching and encouragement.”

Hillsborough novelist Allan Gurganus said Saturday that, just before Kenan’s death, he had sent him a letter about his new book.

Gurganus said he first met Kenan in the late 1980s, when his novel “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” was about to be published. Kenan was working as an editorial assistant, an entry-level position.

“Everyone recognized him as a serious and talented person,” Gurganus said.

He added, “I always loved his sense of humor… his work was beautiful. It was the work of a born storyteller. It had all the charm of folklore and fairytales with surprising turns. It was beguiling and filled with wit and wisdom.”

Kenan received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the 1997 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2005, the state’s highest civilian award; and was made a Fellow of the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2007. He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2018.

He taught for more than 20 years, including a stint at Duke University. Kenan was currently a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. According to Daniel Wallace, the director of the creative writing program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Kenan had heart-related health issues and suffered a stroke a few years ago.

The two exchanged text messages Wednesday night, Wallace said during a phone interview Saturday with The News & Observer. A friend became worried when Kenan stopped communicating on Thursday morning and called the sheriff’s department to perform a wellness check on him. Kenan was found dead, Wallace said.

“He was a brilliant writer and a mentor to so many writers who came behind him — particularly young, Black gay writers who looked at him as a hero,” Wallace said. “His best work was ahead of him. On every conceivable level this is a tragedy.”

An online celebration of Kenan’s life, organized by UNC’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, will be held Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 5 p.m. In addition to Kenan’s colleagues, it will feature Mary D. Williams performing “Lean on Me,” novelist Tayari Jones and Alane Salierno Mason, vice president and executive editor of W.W. Norton & Co., which published his most recent book.

Registration for the Zoom link is at englishcomplit.unc.edu/randall-kenan.

This story was originally published August 29, 2020 at 7:49 PM with the headline "NC writer Randall Kenan, a voice of Southern literature, dies at 57."