Qualla: Hollins University https://qualla.com/hollins-university en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Hollins University https://qualla.com/hollins-university Hollins University: Introduction https://qualla.com/hollins-university/ One October morning, after the first frost, classes simply do not happen at Hollins. The date is a closely guarded secret known only to the senior students. When dawn breaks, the campus erupts in costumes and noise, and the entire community - students, faculty, staff - climbs Tinker Mountain together. Lunch is fried chicken and Tinker Cake, eaten on the summit. Skits and songs follow before the procession winds back down. The tradition dates to the 1880s, predating the women's suffrage movement, and the secrecy of the date is itself part of the ritual. At a college founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary, where Annie Dillard once studied and where Margaret Wise Brown first imagined Goodnight Moon, traditions accumulate. So do writers.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/h/hollins-university-wp/dnxh-hollins-university-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hollins University: From Mineral Springs to Seminary https://qualla.com/hollins-university/ Before there was a college here, there was a resort. From 1820 to 1841, Botetourt Springs drew visitors to its mineral waters in the Roanoke Valley. When the resort failed, its buildings passed to a short-lived seminary, then in 1842 to Valley Union Seminary, founded by Baptist m...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/h/hollins-university-wp/dnxh-hollins-university-from-mineral-springs-to-seminary.mp3 0:06 2 full Hollins University: The Cocke Family's Long Shadow https://qualla.com/hollins-university/ Charles Lewis Cocke ran Hollins as a family business and a paternal mission. The school was built and maintained partly through the labor of enslaved people; in 1846, Cocke had also established the first school for enslaved people in the Roanoke area, though many of those student...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/h/hollins-university-wp/dnxh-hollins-university-the-cocke-familys-long-shadow.mp3 0:06 3 full Hollins University: The Most Productive Writing Program in America https://qualla.com/hollins-university/ In 1959, Hollins started one of the first writer-in-residence programs in America. The graduate program in creative writing followed in 1960, founded by Louis D. Rubin Jr. What came next is hard to explain by numbers alone. Annie Dillard, class of 1967, won the Pulitzer Prize for...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/h/hollins-university-wp/dnxh-hollins-university-the-most-productive-writing-program-in-america.mp3 0:06 4 full Hollins University: The Quadrangle and the Mountain https://qualla.com/hollins-university/ The campus that holds these stories sits in a wooded valley north of Roanoke, framed by the Blue Ridge. The Hollins College Quadrangle, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, consists of six contributing buildings spanning seven decades of construction. Th...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/h/hollins-university-wp/dnxh-hollins-university-the-quadrangle-and-the-mountain.mp3 0:06 5 full