LUMBERTON — Jill McCorkle recently asked a group of Wesley Pines residents what they “pretended to be” when they were children. The question was a prompt for a creative writing workshop the novelist leads at the retirement community.

After scribbling their responses in notepads, the residents were invited to share what they had written with the room. One man said that he pretended to be an adult and used his father’s razor as a prop. A woman told stories about how she would impersonate movie stars with her siblings inside the Proctor Law building. Another woman talked about her imaginary adventures with the Swiss Family Robinson.

McCorkle, who grew up in Robeson County, says the monthly workshop is typically attended by 10 residents. Finley and Ruth Read, retired educators who taught the writer at Lumberton High School, are regular participants.

“This group of people has such wonderful stories and there’s so much wonderful history,” McCorkle said. “We hope in the future to compile the stories in a publication and have a public reading.”

The workshop started out as an idea that McCorkle pitched to Pamela Renfrew, director of Community Life Service at Wesley Pines.

“We want to stir their memories and get them to remember growing up,” Renfrew said. “Jill helps them remember days gone by and the fun of life.”

It’s perhaps fitting that “Life After Life,” McCorkle’s most recent novel, is set in a retirement home. Published in 2013, the book was praised as “clever, bighearted and wise” by Vanity Fair.

McCorkle has won a slew of literary awards over the past three decades, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her work has been featured in annual anthologies like Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.

She lives in Hillsborough and is currently at work on her seventh novel.

“A big chunk of it takes place in Robeson County,” she said of the upcoming book, which is based on an historic train accident. “There’s always something about here in my work.”

Jaymie Baxley | The Robesonian | Jill McCorkle, an author from Lumberton, leads a creative writing workshop at Wesley Pines retirement community. Her most recent book, 2013’s “Life After Life,” follows the residents of a fictional retirement home.
https://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_Jill-McCorkle-1.jpgJaymie Baxley | The Robesonian | Jill McCorkle, an author from Lumberton, leads a creative writing workshop at Wesley Pines retirement community. Her most recent book, 2013’s “Life After Life,” follows the residents of a fictional retirement home.
| Jill McCorkle leads creative writing workshop

By Jaymie Baxley

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Features editor Jaymie Baxley can be reached at 910-416-5771 or by email at [email protected].