Story by Jennifer Tran
Photos by Dustin Duong
ALBEMARLE, N.C. — On her walk to Greenlaw Hall — UNC-Chapel Hill’s home for its English and comparative literature department — Ruth Moose would think of prompts for her writing class to respond to.
In one of the first classes Moose taught at the university in 1998, Jenny Han, author of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” and showrunner of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” responded to a prompt with a literary image: Characters sitting on the steps. A hole in a red bathing suit.
The response turned into Han’s first book, “Shug,” published in 2006.
“You know, I can’t really take any credit,” Moose said. “The spark was there, and she just kept going with it. And you can’t predict — you don’t know which students will.”
Moose, 84, retired in 2011 after a 15-year role as a creative writing professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. She now lives in Albemarle and writes. Her most recent book is “The Goings on at Glen Arbor Acres,” a collection of short stories about retirement and one’s senior years.
But, there is a fixture of her retirement life that reflects her time as an educator: A relationship with her former students and fellow collaborators.
After leaving UNC-Chapel Hill, Han would send emails to Moose about each milestone accomplished. From book acceptances and movie series, both have kept in contact for more than 20 years.
Still, there is fellowship in shared emails, letters and moments. Though physical distance and time has become a barrier, Han and Moose have become permanent fixtures in each other’s lives, author to author.
Photo by Dustin Duong
Ashley Memory didn’t start off as an author.
She graduated with an English degree at UNC-Chapel Hill and went into the professional communications world. When she began writing fiction and short stories later on, she enrolled in a continuing education class at Chatham County Community College.
“They offered you a certificate at Chatham County Community College, and I earned the Ruth Moose certificate because nearly all the classes I took — probably 90 percent of them — were her,” Memory said. “If she was teaching, I took it.”
Moose gave her writing classes prompts at the beginning of each session, which students had 15 minutes to respond to.
Photo by Dustin Duong
Memory said when Moose read a student’s response that she liked, she let out a slight, breathy sigh.
“And it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, that’s the best thing I’ve ever read or, boy, your grammar is really scintillating,” Memory said. “It was more like, ‘You have something there, and you just moved me.’ And that was sort of the tip of the movement for the writer, is that somebody cared about what they had to say.”
What makes Moose stand out, Memory said, is that she wanted her students to have their work published and fortify their careers. While some professors focused more on improving their students’ writing, Moose shared contact information.
Ross White, director of the UNC-Chapel Hill creative writing department, said that every professor at the University has a different way of looking at student work, but that his department approaches each piece with the expectation of publication. It also depends on the student’s goals — professors of the department talk about the publishing world often, and there is a class offered that is devoted to having students experience the publishing process through a publisher lens.
“The spirit that the program had back then, I think it’s still very, very much alive in the sense that we care passionately about our alumni and we are endlessly proud of their accomplishments,” White said.
Now, Memory is a published author, and her poetry has appeared in journals, magazines and anthologies. From student to friend, she and Moose email each other every day. She’ll sneak Moose a bookshelf into her home, against Moose’s son’s wishes. And when she’s at library book sales, Moose is already there, holding a book Memory was thinking about buying.
“I thank God every day,” Memory said. “Many times, it’s a scary world we live in — a lot’s going on. But a connection like this shows you that the life we have is real and true, and it was given to us as a gift; we are creating cross images. And friendship is the full flowering of fellowship.”
In one of Moose’s earliest memories, her grandfather, a preacher, was writing a sermon with a fountain pen and left the room. She climbed into his chair, reached for the pen and wrote all over the sermon, mixing his adult writing with her child’s scrawl.
Her grandfather was furious, but the mercy of her grandmother saved her from punishment. To appease Moose, she was given an old pen — with no ink.
No longer a child, Moose’s scrawl has matured into writing that is “firing,” according to her friend Rebecca Duncan.
“It’s intense,” she said. The two are in writing groups together, where they collaborate and share creative energy. “It can be funny, but her wit is so sharp, and her insight into people — it’s just almost beyond description.”
Fred Chappell, a retired English professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Moose’s alma mater, once said, “You never learn it all.”
So, in an attempt to learn in pieces, Moose attends classes on Zoom every week, which “infuses” her writing, she said. And after writer’s groups, she can list moments where constructive criticism helped her improve as a writer.
Neither Moose nor Duncan are afraid to send critiques. In her mailbox, Duncan will find chapters printed out from the last week’s writing group. Moose will write over the pages with words of encouragement, and suggestions to help the flow of ideas.
Duncan said she can’t quite say she’s an equal to Moose, since she is an academic and is just beginning to delve into creative writing.
“So in that way, I truly admire her and I would never consider myself her equal,” she said. “But, we also have this beautiful friendship. It’s unique.”
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When Moose speaks, her voice is lightweight and airy. When she pauses, her words are suspended within moments of silence. She is in perfect rhythm with her mind, never falling into lulls of mechanical standstill.
“You can’t stop,” Duncan said. “You just follow it wherever it goes.”
In Stanly County Public Library, 12 years after leaving UNC-Chapel Hill, Moose still knows how to work a room.
She talks through her time as a professor and answers questions about her books and writing process. When she makes a joke, it lands immediately, everyone joining her as she laughs. Her laugh is recognizable through the crowd.
Photo by Dustin Duong
Moose holds up a black-and-white composition book to show the room full of adults, right hand resting at the bottom of the binding while her left hand gestures toward her writing. Bold, cursive writing covers each page. She flips through a couple pages and reads them aloud in a voice reminiscent of her time teaching children’s literature. It is full of her responses to prompts she created as a professor.
In her home in Albemarle, Moose has a bookshelf in her living room dedicated to her students’ published work. Her Outlook notification chimes in the background, an inbox full of emails from old students, friends and colleagues.
Moose loves hearing from her students. She loves seeing how they grow after graduation — through marriage, children and their careers. She kept her UNC-Chapel Hill email after retirement so students could contact her about their published books. One student asked for a recommendation for a poem to be read at her wedding. Others who have pursued careers outside of writing tell her they still plan on writing novels they came up with in class.
“And I bet they will,” she said.
At every corner, there are paintings on the walls created by her late husband, Talmadge Moose. Landscapes, magazine covers and a portrait of Moose when she was younger. She said she writes to create, in a way similar to her artist husband.
In ways more than one, she has created something even better.
