Saluting A Masterful Mentor: W. Dabney Stuart James McLaughlin ’86, author of the novels “Panther Gap” and “Bearskin,” salutes W. Dabney Stuart, S. Blount Mason Professor of English Emeritus.

James McLaughlin ’86
July 31, 2025

I knew professor of English Dabney Stuart’s son through summer camp, and before my freshman year at W&L, Nathan suggested I find his father on campus and let him know I wanted to be a writer.

That phrase … we used to speak it so innocently. I thought I might be special, anointed, that I would pull the sword from the stone.

When I visited professor Stuart’s office to tell him I wanted to be a writer, he suggested we go fishing — somewhere on the Maury River, I think, a place I’d never been. Can’t remember if we caught anything, or if we talked about writers and writing, but we struck up a friendship.

Over the next several years, Dabney went out of his way to help me survive the English Department despite my struggles with literary analysis. No major in creative writing existed, but we managed to fake one. Years later, I’ve come to understand how lucky I was — all that one-on-one coaching from a master poet and fiction writer.

As a student with more enthusiasm than talent, more self-delusion than work ethic, what I needed — without knowing it — was Dabney’s brand of honest support that never coddled. Spring semester of my junior year, he encouraged me to enter a writing contest “because no one else has entered.” As predicted, I won. A soupçon of success, with an asterisk ensuring some humility.

Dabney helped prepare me for a life of seldom-rewarded work while boosting my heart for the work itself. He made clear that if I really was determined to be a writer, he would do what he could to support and encourage me, a decades-long commitment. I certainly had no inkling what his promise entailed for me: the great good fortune of a trusted lifelong friend.

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James McLaughlin ’86, author of the novels “Panther Gap” and “Bearskin,” grew up in Virginia and now lives in the mountains of Utah.

Dabney Stuart, S. Blount Mason Professor of English Emeritus, has published 20 books of poetry, been nominated for six Pulizter Prizesand won the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of W&L: The Washington and Lee Magazine. Contact us at magazine@wlu.edu.