“My time in the Department of English and Comparative Literature was formative for both my career and my private life. The department faculty and staff nurtured my writing and editing skills, challenged me to think critically, and equipped me with a deep knowledge of the literary canon that continues to inform my work as a content editor for a thriving educational publishing company.”

“Whereas in many of my other classes, I learned facts or theories or mechanisms of action, in my English classes, I learned how to think analytically and articulate my ideas. I also thought a lot about character—what people want, what motivates them, why they do what they do, their backstory—and language as a tool, both of which have turned out to be awfully relevant now to me as a psychiatrist.”

“Arriving at UNC, I thought ‘old’ and even American literature was boring, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was the one who made literature boring—that there was something new and exciting in all of my classes. Dr. Carlston was the first to teach me what reading means; the differences between summary, description, evaluation, and analysis; and how to express myself well.”

“Long ago, in a poetry class in the English department at UNC, I gained the confidence to put thoughts and images on a page and share them with others. In that class, I began my love affair with the English language, with the magic and mystery of words. Since then, I’ve published over a hundred children’s books.”

“Our whole society needs more people who can see things from many points of view, who can inhabit someone else’s world in the ways that only literature—especially foreign literature—enables us to do.”

“As an English major at Carolina…I learned to really understand the layers of meaning in the works I studied. In doing so, I also gained a greater understanding of what it was that made those words speak to me.”

My time in UNC’s writing program built a necessary and irreplaceable foundation, all learned from proven masters of the craft. Nyxia is just the first novel in a long career for me, and it’s not hard to trace my path back to Greenlaw Hall.”

“I can’t speak highly enough about the English major at UNC. When I started college I had no intention of majoring in English, but I fell in love with the major after taking a course on Renaissance literature, with a special focus on poetry…I can’t imagine a major that would provide better preparation for life after graduation.”