by Angela Spivey

arah Dessen is 30 years old, has her name on the cover of four novels, and she teaches undergraduates. But she still gets mistaken for one. The first time Dessen went to get her mail, a secretary tried to chase her out of the faculty mail room because "students aren't allowed in there."

Dessen is used to being the kid around here. Her father has an office down the hall. When she was eight she would skateboard the rough red bricks in the pit, a gathering place near the student stores. At 10 she played volleyball with her brother at faculty picnics.

But she didn't wear precious Carolina blue, and she didn't dream of her name on a UNC diploma; her dad and mom taught here, for Pete's sake. She figured she'd had enough of this place. In high school, the closest she wanted to get to it was the sundial at the Morehead Planetarium, where she and her friends would sneak a few cigarettes.

High school graduation came and went, and Dessen got accepted at UNC-Greensboro, thought she'd major in advertising. But before her first year was over, she was back in Chapel Hill. She got a job, never mind what, then started taking classes at Carolina. Shortly, she found Doris Betts' creative writing class, and she knew. "That class reconnected me with writing," she says. "I had been writing most of my life, since I was about six, except for the last couple years of high school when I was messing around and getting into trouble."

Dessen eventually started going to Carolina full time, and she worked hard. Five years later, she was graduating with honors from the English department's creative writing program. She had already finished her first novel (which today she calls "awful") and was writing every day. She decided she didn't want to stop. Since her junior year at Carolina, she had been waiting tables at the Flying Burrito, a Mexican place about a mile from campus. Three or four nights a week was enough to cover the necessities and a rented "shack" in Durham. And it left her days free to write. She told her parents she wouldn't be sending out résumés.

 

Next: "It's a good gig."

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