Daniel Wallace, the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at UNC-Chapel Hill, will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame on Oct. 4 in Southern Pines.Wallace, who is also a Carolina alumnus, is the director of the creative writing program in the department of English and comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences.The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame celebrates and promotes the state’s rich literary heritage by commemorating its leading authors and encouraging the conti...
Daniel Wallace, the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at UNC-Chapel Hill, will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame on Oct. 4 in Southern Pines.
Wallace, who is also a Carolina alumnus, is the director of the creative writing program in the department of English and comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame celebrates and promotes the state’s rich literary heritage by commemorating its leading authors and encouraging the continued flourishing of great literature.
Wallace is the author of six novels, including Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, Ray in Reverse, The Watermelon King, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, The Kings and Queens of Roam and His memoir, , was published in 2023. His collection of short stories, , was published in 2025. Big Fish was adapted into a movie (where Wallace had a cameo) and a Broadway musical. Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician won the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize for best fiction published in North Carolina in 2009. In 2019, Wallace won the Harper Lee Award, given to a native of Alabama who has made a significant contribution to Alabama literature.
Wallace is also an illustrator, whose drawings have appeared in books, newspapers and magazines all over the world. He did the illustrations for his two children’s books, The Cat’s Pajamas and The Hole Story.
Wallace’s novels have been translated into over three-dozen languages. His essays and interviews have been published in Slate, Poets & Writers, The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun and Our State magazine, where he was, for a short time, the barbecue critic.
There are other UNC-Chapel Hill connections among the inductees. Michael Parker received his undergraduate degree in creative writing from Carolina and is the author of eight novels. He was awarded the department of English and comparative literature’s Thomas Wolfe Prize in 2020. For nearly 30 years, Parker taught in the MFA Writing Program at UNC-Greensboro.
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, founded in 1996, is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network.