Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by Dorothy Owen for writings by Guy Owen, and by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Guy Owen Papers #4287, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received 1980-1987 (Acc. 081109, 083157, 084023, 084024, 084081, 086055, 086117, 087057), 2018 (Acc. 103327).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American fiction--20th century.
• American poetry--20th century.
• Authors, American--North Carolina--20th century.
• College teachers--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• North Carolina State University--Faculty--History--20th century.
• Owen, Guy, 1925-1981.

• Southern Poetry Review Records (#4023). Owen was editor, 1962-1978.

Guy Owen, Jr., was born on February 24, 1925, in Clarkton, Bladen County, North Carolina. He graduated from Clarkton High School in 1942, and worked at assorted odd jobs before joining the Army in 1943, serving in France and Germany. He returned to the United States in 1945 to attend the University of North Carolina, where he majored in English. In 1952, Owen married Dorothy Meadows Jennings of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in 1955.

Owen's first teaching experience was as instructor of English at Davidson College from 1949 to 1951. He also taught part-time at UNC from 1951 to 1954, while completing his dissertation, and was associate professor of English at Elon College during the 1954-1955 school year.

In 1955, Owen accepted the position of associate professor of English at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida; he taught there until 1961. During this time, he wrote his first novel, Season of Fear, which was published in 1960.

Owen became a member of the faculty at North Carolina State College in Raleigh in 1961, remaining there until his death twenty years later. While teaching American literature and creative writing courses, he completed and published three novels, two volumes of poems, and a collection of short stories. He also helped edit two anthologies of verse: New Southern Poets: Selected Poems from Southern Poetry Review, and Contemporary Poets of North Carolina.

In 1958, Owen co-founded the poetry magazine Impetus, which in 1965 became Southern Poetry Review. He was also an editor of North Carolina Folklore.

Owen died of cancer in July 1981, at age 56.

Well over half of this collection consists of material produced by Owen during his various writing projects. Many of these items are handwritten or typed drafts of novels, short stories, poems, articles, and the texts of speeches, and many of these drafts are unpublished.

Correspondence, chiefly professional in nature, subject files, news clippings about Owen and his work, photographs, and audio tapes, comprise the rest of the collection. Duplicate materials and widely available printed materials were separated and transferred or discarded during processing.