UVA professor’s novel longlisted for National Book Award

October 24, 2025
Kevin Moffett sitting in his living room, left, and a rendering of the cover of his book, ‘Only Son’, right.

UVA creative writing professor Kevin Moffett’s new novel, “Only Son,” is due out Nov. 4. (Photo by Ellen Reyes; contributed photo))

When Kevin Moffett woke up one morning in September, he didn’t expect to see his debut novel, “Only Son,” on the National Book Award longlist. He hadn’t even realized the book – due out Nov. 4 – was eligible for the honor.

“It was an absolute surprise. It wasn’t even in my mind; I’m not someone who wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Let’s look at the award finalists today.’ So, I just got this bit of happiness from it,” said Moffett, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia.

“Only Son” is about the childhood, adulthood and eventual fatherhood of an unnamed narrator whose own father dies just before the novel begins, based partly on Moffett’s own life.

“I grew up in Florida like the narrator. There are a lot of autobiographical connections between my childhood and the narrator in the book,” Moffett said. “I don’t feel shy about saying that or pointing those connections out.”

An early scene in the book depicts neighborhood boys luring an alligator out of a man-made lake, tying a rope around its snout, and killing the animal. The incident sticks with the narrator as a remarkably cruel act. Moffett said that kind of encroachment on nature is typical of a Florida childhood, especially as the state’s population has grown.

But “Only Son” should not be mistaken for a memoir, even if it occasionally uses devices from the genre.

“In writing this, I found myself recalling things that I know did not happen. … The third section of the novel, in particular, would not pass a fact checker’s muster,” Moffett said.

“Only Son” is not Moffett’s usual fare. The winner of a National Magazine Award and Pushcart Prize, Moffett is known for his short stories and formal experiments. “The Silent History,” one of his most recent works co-written with Eli Horowitz and Matthew Derby, is a serialized digital-first book with location-specific entries that a reader must visit to access.

“Only Son” did not begin as a novel at all.

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“The book you read is not the book I set out to write,” Moffett said. “I started working on this six years ago, as a series of very short stories. I was going to be content to write that, but somewhere along the way, I saw a structure begin to emerge.”

The book is divided into three parts, consisting of the narrator’s childhood, his fatherhood to a young son, and a road trip with his now college-bound son. The narrator begins as a lonely child, a “grub,” in search of who he wants to be. His single mother doles out only a single criticism when he misbehaves: “You need to act like somebody.”

It’s a command Moffett’s narrator takes seriously, eventually becoming a writer, a teacher, a husband and a father. The novel asks what it takes to be a good son and a good father, especially for someone who no longer has a father.

“I think the book is my best answer to those questions. It’s a lifelong pursuit,” Moffett said.

Many writer-parents struggle to balance family and career. UVA’s first writer-in-residence, William Faulkner, was an infamously terrible father, reportedly telling his daughter nobody remembers Shakespeare’s children after she asked him to stop drinking. But fatherhood was a driving question behind “Only Son.”

“My writing was very much fueled by these questions of reckoning, by the idea of looking back at your childhood in light of raising a child, and coming to an impasse,” Moffett said.

Many of the buzziest books of the last decade have dealt with what it means to be a mother and a daughter. While Moffett said he wasn’t thinking, “This is what the market needs,” he did follow the advice he gives his students.

“Don’t write what you know; write what you can. And write the book you want to read,” he said.

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Alice Berry

University News Associate Office of University Communications

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