Q&A
once a
Tar Heel… Mary Pope Osborne, author of the ‘Magic Tree House’ series, reflects on her time at UNC and adventures thereafter
W
hen were you a student at UNC, and what did you study? I graduated in
1971. I was a drama major, a bachelor’s in fine arts in the beginning. Then, in my junior year, I switched to studying religion. What made you want to study at UNC? My
dad was in the military, and he retired in North Carolina. He really wanted the four kids in the family to go to Carolina – it had such a great reputation, and so he sent all four of us there. Were you involved in any groups or clubs while you were here? Just the drama group. Back then, we really
didn’t join clubs. It was an oasis of counterculturalism, so we were all too cool … but the reason I loved it was because you could find your community out of so many students in different areas.
By Ave r y H o us e ho ld er
Did you have a favorite place when you were a student, maybe a study spot or favorite eatery? I loved sitting on the wall on Franklin Street, not knowing
who’s gonna walk by. That was the meeting place, and it was very unpredictable. It was exciting. How does it make you feel when you reflect on your time in Chapel Hill? Oh,
always with joy and nostalgia. And of course, when you get to my age, you think everything is right there, but of course, it’s not. You sort of think that the people you knew there, if you went back, you’d find them right how they were then. So I’ve learned these things are ephemeral, but they feed into your life. Would you go to UNC again, given the chance? Oh, definitely. And I would
probably take a wide range of subjects, because I was so focused on drama for two years. From what I’ve read, you’ve lived quite the adventurous life. Where did life take you after graduation? It was a crazy time, and you could do some
crazy things. My roommate and I worked to get just enough money right after we graduated to go to Europe with a backpack, and we hitchhiked to Greece, where we lived in a cave. We washed our clothes in the ocean, we hardly had any money. Then I met a man from Spain, and he asked me if I wanted to go around the world, and I said, ‘Why not?’ I took off for almost a year with this crazy person and barely made it out with my life. By the time we went overland through Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally got to Nepal, I got very, very sick and had to come back. So, what made you want to start writing? I met my husband, Will [Osborne],
who also graduated from Carolina, and I went to New York to live with him. We got married and started traveling, and he was always on the road with some show or another. I went to be with him, so I would take a little portable typewriter on the road and start writing on that.
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chapelhillmagazine.com
January/February 2024