Fred Chappell, ca. 1970

“I absolutely love this gorgeous film,” said Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation. “And what I loved most about this film, that traces Fred’s life from childhood through family and studying and writing and teaching and novels and poems, is that it is – just like Fred – absolutely full of heart and stories.”

Interviewing dozens of authors, critics, and Chappell family members, Frierson and his team filmed not only in Greensboro but in Chappell’s hometown of Canton in the North Carolina mountains. He even interviewed Fred and his wife, Susan Nicholls Chappell ’70, at the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church where they were married in 1959.

Days before the screening, the Chappells welcomed our magazine staff to their backyard garden. Susan showed the wonderful mossy area and the shed where Fred has often written. Asked about a nearby sculpture of a goat, Fred referred to the scene in “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” where a goat and a teacher have a debate. He noted that farm animals were ubiquitous where he grew up.

A Sunset Hills neighbor at the time, artist Jim Barnhill ’82 MFA, created that goat. The Chappells also asked him to create the centerpiece of their patio. It echoes Botticelli’s artwork of the solar system, an illustration in Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” circled by text. “I’m a big fan of Dante,” Fred says. “That’s the last line in each of the three parts of the ‘Divine Comedy’: ‘L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle.’” 

He helpfully translates, returning to his western North Carolina accent: “The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”