In Memoriam
Max Steele was an author, mentor, and professor of English emeritus at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Steele’s books include “Debbie,” “The Cat and the Coffee Drinkers,” and the story collections “Where She Brushed Her Hair” and “The Hat of My Mother.”
His fiction brought him honors including the Harper Prize, the Saxton Memorial Trust Award, the Mayflower Cup Award and O. Henry Prizes. He received grants for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts.
A much admired and beloved teacher and mentor to generations of writers, Steele directed the UNC creative writing program from 1967 until he retired in 1986. Many of his students later became authors, among them Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle and Lawrence Naumoff.
“Max Steele was a fabulous writer, with a phenomenal imagination, and a genius as a teacher of writing,” said Bland Simpson, current program director. “He led us, taught us, inspired us, engaged and befriended us, and never ceased to be the most intriguing of men. We have known a lion.”
Born in Greenville, S.C., in 1922, Steele attended Furman and Vanderbilt universities and the Sorbonne and Academie Julienne in Paris. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. He was first published in Harper’s magazine in 1944 and graduated from UNC in 1946.
He then lived in Paris, where he was a friend and colleague of George Plimpton and a founding editor of the literary magazine The Paris Review. He remained connected with the Review until his death, listed on the masthead as an editorial associate.
Steele returned to Chapel Hill to teach in the creative writing program under Jessie Rehder, succeeding her as director upon her death in 1967. With fellow teachers including authors Daphne Athas and Doris Betts, Steele built the program into a highly prized, nationally recognized undergraduate writing curriculum.
“When, during 20 years, he transformed a scatter of writing courses at UNC into a top national undergraduate program, Max changed the lives of hundreds of students and developing writers,” said Betts, also a prominent author and teacher, and professor emerita of English at UNC.
“He changed mine as well – teaching me not only how to teach the craft of fiction writing, but how to revise my own work, how to survive academia while having fun. Today, I’m learning how much I mourn and will go on missing Max as a writer, a wit, an irreplaceable friend.”
Steele was was awarded honorary doctorates from Belmont Abbey College and Furman University.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:20 pm
I loved Max.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I wish he was not dead so i could see that he is not dead
April 15th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
There are times when hear his voice and I know he is still with me. He loved you with all his heart, Oliver. He loved all of you, more than any of the students, more than the writing progam, the magazines. That was all I wanted to tell you, when I was trying to get in touch with after he left us. He was very good to me, when I need a friend. I hope I was even a fraction as good to him. I know I wasn’t always. I was young and bullheaded about writing. Stupid. This will be a week of turmoil in the world. It has the potential to be one none of us will ever forget. Max taught be a great deal about seeing. He listened when I explained how I saw, sometimes, what no one else could see. He never made fun of me…he tried to help me get on in this world.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I check this site every few weeks, still I want to know that there are those that remember, love, realize how significant, Max was and is in our lives. I was a lost soul in the 70’s and Max found me, saw something, and called me to write. I will never forget his directive one morning in a cafeteria on campus: Your writing is raw and alive, write. It has been the one thing I’ve held onto all these years.
As I say again, and as I so want to say to Max, my heart yearning for that chance - thank you for seeing me, for encouraging me to see this world and put it to paper - meager in my efforts, overflowing in my desire.
Thank you so much Max Steele, again - I love you.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
O, the sadness to discover today that Max has left us. He was so kind, so generous to me, in personal as well as in professional ways. When he hired me to teach in the Creative Writing program in the 70’s, he opened the world’s door. He insisted I needed an agent, and found the perfect agent. He opened his house to me, and constantly found ways to encourage and help. His teasing was delicious; his many magical gifts changed my life. I’ve missed him all these years, and I will now miss him more, if that’s possible, after today. I continue to give “The Cat & The Coffee Drinker” to every new friend I make. Over these many years, he has constantly lived in my thoughts and heart. His sweetness! His huge and loving spirit!
May 19th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Sorry for the typos in my last post. I write in a lot of languages and it is often difficult to come back to English. I, too, check here often. It seems that I had a lapse, there, where I felt his edits of my work or mine of his were like edits of one another. I was right about that and wrong. They were edits of us, sure, but they were us taking a chance at changing one another and how we saw the world at that moment. I have learned, by going back through what we said, that I was too critical of his criticism (there is a tough one for you!). When someone has that lasting impression, he has changed you. He has taught you. And I suppose, you taught him, for you taught him how to change you, in some small way, how to see criticsm as constructive not as an attack. For better or worse, I found a different way to write. All my teachers have done this; I mean teachers, not merely those who stood at the front of a class. Max took a great deal of time and effort to try to show me I was fighting against myself, not the world and not words. Were he here, I could not repay that. You repay that in words. You repay that to the present. You repay that to the world and to others. Somehow.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I lived in Chapel Hill for only a few years and I knew Max only as the kind man I loved to sit next to and talk the morning away at the Open Eye coffee shop. It wasnt until I was about to leave that i found out who he was and what he had done. I do not read much, but I asked him for his books to read. I loved them! I loved him and I regret that I did not say good bye.
Good bye Max, you sweet , humble man. Thank you for the attention you gave to me.