Nancy Stancill

    Nancy Stancill spent 38 years as a newspaper reporter and editor before she began writing fiction full-time. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, she earned an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Tampa in 2015.

   Her works include Saving Texas (2013), Winning Texas (2016), Tall (nonfiction, 2020), and Deadly Secrets ( 2024).

  More on Nancy is here.

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Landis Wade podcast about ‘Tall’

By

May 7, 2021

The conversation below with Charlotte podcaster Landis Wade at charlottereaderspodcast.com was recorded in February and released today. I read from “Tall” and we talked about the book.

https://www.nancystancill.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/210507Podcast.mp3

 

Landis describes “Tall” as “an authentically written and compulsively readable memoir of Nancy’s life from gangly teen to investigative reporter.” The podcast includes a segment on “Investigative Journalism Tips for Writers.”

“Tall” is available at Park Road Books and Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Filed Under: Tall

The Last Day

By

March 19, 2021

I wrote this poem about my mother-in-law Jaye, who died two weeks ago.

The Last Day

Hungry.
Stop for
a chicken sandwich.
Arrive at
the nursing home
by 1:15 p.m.

In Jaye’s room,
an attendant
tells us gently:
She passed away
at 1 p.m.

Overwhelmed
by guilt.
If only
we hadn’t stopped,
we could have been present
for the last minutes
of my dear mother-in-law’s life.

Trying to ease
our minds,
the staffer says:
She’s been in
a coma-like
state
for a couple of days.

It’s easy to see
that Jaye
is gone.
Her face
is turning
sallow.
Her body
is so, so still.

We sit
beside her
in silent
mourning.
My sister-in-law
arrives.
We hug
and sob.

A seven-year bout
with dementia
erased
the joy in Jaye’s life –
and some of the joy in mine.

Before,
she had loved me
as if I were
her child.
She praised
my stories,
my mothering,
even my cooking.

Her love for me
was unequivocal.
I loved her
the same way.

If only we
hadn’t stopped,
we could have
held her hands,
stroked her hair,
helped to ease her
into eternity.

Filed Under: Nancy

Happy (Bookers) Hour

By

Feb. 20, 2021

Nancy talked about “Tall” during a Zoom meeting of the Happy Bookers book club. The Feb. 18 meeting included a lengthy Q&A session.

 

Filed Under: Tall

Why I wrote a memoir before another novel

By

Feb. 7, 2021

I’ve written two novels about Annie Price, investigative reporter, and intend to write a third – someday. Readers ask me: Why take the time and energy to write a memoir when you could be working on that next piece of fiction?

The simplest answer, as Socrates said, is “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

That doesn’t mean you have to write a memoir. It does mean that you can evaluate the life you’ve led and whether it has the meaning and heft you intended. It’s never too late to make changes in a life.

First, an explanation of the difference between an autobiography and a memoir. An autobiography is a chronologically told story of a writer’s life. A memoir generally covers one aspect or one incident in a writer’s life with a theme running through it. Memoirs, built on memories, can also be told chronologically.

Tall: Love and Journalism in a Six-foot World is definitely a memoir. I started out intending to write a sociological account of the obstacles many tall girls and women face in their journey to fit in.

My book’s first chapter is about a Swedish woman who had more than two inches cut from her thigh bones to shorten her 6-foot-1½ inch height. According to a 1964 Parade magazine article, the young nurse was ecstatically happy with the result. I searched for her online without results.

The first chapter also includes an account of girls in Australia who were treated with hormones to stunt their growth. The hormones, prescribed by doctors in league with worried parents, often resulted in tall girls’ developing reproductive problems later in life.

But I could find no concrete evidence of leg-cutting or treating with hormones in the United States. I’m sure there were incidents of hormone treatment aimed at tall girls, but the recipients have kept quiet about it.

Besides, I thought, would anyone really want to read that book?

What would be better, I decided, was to write about my own experience growing up as a tall girl and my life as a tall woman.

That overarching theme led to my accounts of searching for love and finding a profession as a journalist. For either search to be successful, I had to develop the confidence I never had as a tall teenager. That confidence was slow – but steady – in coming, as a reporter, then as an investigative journalist.

My search for love was another confidence-building opportunity, leading me from a broken engagement and another failed relationship to the man of my dreams. I had to overcome my prejudice against shorter men to appreciate that lover, now my husband, who is two inches shorter.

I wrote about my family of seven, which included a stay-at-home mother (who later became a teacher), my editor-publisher father and my four siblings. Some of my observations included embarrassment over the birth of a sister when I was fourteen, and anger about not being allowed to move into a college-bound sister’s room.

It’s difficult to write about my deceased parents without feeling some frustration and a lot of sadness. They made mistakes, particularly in their sometimes-hostile relationship with each other, but they always tried hard to be good parents to their brood of five. Largely, they succeeded.
My siblings like the book (some more than others.) Only one of the four asked for something to be taken out. She argued that particular part was their secret; not ours. I abided by her request.

Honesty is essential in a memoir and readers seem to sense when it’s lacking. I have tried to be honest throughout this book, though it’s painful to look back at such things as being teased about my tallness as a preteen.

As a journalist, at first it was difficult to allow myself to be vulnerable on the page. But I’ve found that everyone is vulnerable about something. In my case, I related my loneliness of being a first-time mother and my bitter disappointment at not being able to have a second child. I could have stayed quiet about these sensitive subjects but bringing them out allowed me to exorcise some demons.

My memoir also includes some great memories of moving as a bride to the San Francisco Bay Area and eventually relocating to the diametrically different atmosphere of Houston.

Readers say they have enjoyed sections of the memoir relating to my work as an investigative reporter, from stories about women being cheated out of fair divorce settlements to a dangerous project about the crooked leaders of a Texas community college.

I am learning that people are drawn to memoirs in a way they don’t relate to fiction

“I really enjoyed that book,” a friend I hadn’t seen in a while told me. “I liked your novels, but I liked this one better because it’s real.”

A big factor in deciding to write this memoir is my three-year-old granddaughter. I hope that someday she’ll enjoy knowing more about Mimi and her life. My son enjoyed it, though, like many men, his reaction was literal.

“Mom, I’m not 6 feet 4,” he told me. “I’m only 6 feet 3 ½.”

In the middle of some serious chapters, I needed that lightness.
As I have gotten older, I’ve had an irresistible need to examine my life as a whole.

How did being tall affect that life? Did it turn out to be a plus or a minus? As I’ve tried to point out, it really depended on the circumstances. Did I live up to my potential as a wife, mother and journalist? It depended on the day, month and year. There have been a lot of highs and lows, as there are in anyone’s life.

I don’t consider my life to be close to the end. I hope that I’ll have many more adventures. Indeed, I have them all the time, new experiences that demand my attention.

I try to make the most of them.

Filed Under: Tall

Building a legacy

By

Jan. 28, 2021

I walked into the Charlotte Observer building for the first time in the spring of 1993. An editor had asked me to apply for an investigative reporting job and the paper had set up a two-day interview. I wasn’t sure I was interested because I had a satisfying job at the Houston Chronicle.

Still, the Observer was a premier Southern newspaper in a state I loved. I was a proud graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and wanted to locate closer to my family in Virginia. My father had just been diagnosed with cancer and I wanted to spend more time with him.

During my Observer interview, I met with close to a dozen editors, talked about journalism for hours and toured parts of the city I’d never seen.

There was plenty to see, including the lovely uptown with its growing number of skyscrapers, tree-lined streets and flower-filled planters. But what intrigued me the most about the commercial area was the iconic Observer building.

Photo: Observer archives.

I’ve always been interested in architecture and could tell that the white, rectangular building was built in the Brutalism style. Located at one end of uptown, it was constructed in 1971, when that type of heavy, faux-modern style was popular. The five-story edifice seemed to squat on its plot of land, its high slitted windows giving it a hooded look.

Inside, a central atrium flooded the middle of the building with light. On each side of the atrium were the escalators, where staffers going up and down waved to each other and talked – or nearly shouted – in truncated conversations. I’d never worked in a newspaper building with escalators and the effect was collegial and charming.

Or so I thought. Two months later, I was working at the Observer and discovered that the escalators were the bane of the staffers’ existence. The moving stairs broke down chronically and often required days to repair. Two small elevators took up most of the slack – and too much time.

The newsroom was on the fourth floor and its signature narrow vertical windows cast a mostly gloomy light on the L-shaped newsroom.

The news staff grumbled about the building’s general inefficiency, but everyone knew important things went on there. The stories ranged from Pulitzer prize winners to three-inch weather updates. In between were civic-minded reports on the school board, city council and county commission.

In my 15 years in the newsroom, I saw and generally experienced varieties of every emotion – exhilaration, boredom, happiness, sadness, pity and disgust. As an editor, I comforted people as they cried, hugged excited staffers and helped to pacify angry reporters.

When I left the paper in 2009 and moved to London, it was with a sense of foreboding. The Observer and its relatively new owner, the McClatchy Corp., were being pummeled by a terrible economy, crippling debt and plummeting circulation. Bankruptcy came a few years later. It was just a matter of time before something bad would happen to the building on Tryon Street.

Sure enough, the building and its ten acres were sold for a multi-use development in 2016 and the wrecking ball appeared not long after. Before the old building was demolished, a big party was held to celebrate its storied history. I didn’t have the heart to go, but my name was inscribed on the lobby’s wall, along with the names of a few thousand other people who’d worked there over the years.

The remnants of the depleted Observer staff moved to the NASCAR building a few blocks away, but that didn’t last either. A few months ago, the editor announced that the paper’s newsroom would be shut down and the few dozen staffers left would work at home, partly because of Covid 19 but mostly because the modern quarters had gotten too expensive. A hedge fund now owns the paper and decided it really doesn’t need a newsroom.

The reviled but beloved Observer building is gone, replaced by a sleek, tall bank. But the new building can’t take away the memories.

Filed Under: Nancy

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