the story of me and wilmington
Hey, y’all! I’m Kate, the nose and hands behind Capeside Candles. I grew up on the state line of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia in the Appalachian mountains. Growing up in a small town, I dreamed of moving away and doing big things, mostly while sitting on a river out in the woods with my best friend, Cody. We spent most of our time watching Dawson’s Creek reruns and dreaming of the ocean.
In the summer between completing my BA in English literature at Carson-Newman University and starting my MA in English literature and Creative Writing at Mississippi State University, a dear friend took us on a trip to Wilmington, North Carolina, to check out the filming locations of Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill. I fell in love with the boardwalk of downtown Wilmington quicker than I’d ever fallen in love with anything or anyone. It felt steeped in magic, lingering with the memories of Dawson and Joey, of Jack and Jen, of Pacey and Andie. I vowed standing on the Cape Fear River, Cody at my side, that one day, I’d call Wilmington home.
I taught composition during my MA at Mississippi State, while I wrote a terrible novel (that I’ll always love) in the style of teen dramas about growing up in a small town and running away to Wilmington. After MSU, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a while, and taught composition at Belmont University. I visited Wilmington every chance I got. I never could shake its magic loose from my bones, the way it healed me from the inside out just by walking the cobblestones on Water Street, gazing out at the Cape Fear bridge, and dipping my toes in its sands. When I learned the University of North Carolina at Wilmington has a top-ranking Creative Writing department, I decided that was how I’d make Wilmington home.
And I did. I finished my MFA from UNCW a few years later, wrote some more terrible novels that’ll never see the light of day, published some short stories. I taught creative writing all through my TAship, and then I stayed on as an adjunct a few semesters after. And then, I made the wild decision to move back to Mississippi, to teach full time at State. It was the right move for my teaching career, and, at the time, for my writing career.
But Wilmington was too far deep in my skin by then. I couldn’t let it go. So I came home.
cody & me
on our first wilmington visit, 2012
cody & me, circa 2018
Teaching during the pandemic was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. When I came home to Wilmington on the tail end of it, I knew I needed something else. I got a job working in marketing at a banking software company, providing a new structure in schedule and time and a work/life balance I’d never had before with teaching. When I mused to my partner I had more spare time than I ever had, he suggested I take up a new hobby. I’d always loved candles, always had one burning in every room of my home at all times, but struggled to find the exact scents I wanted. As I started to get into witchy things (crystals, herbs, tea, moon magics), I wanted specific blends with specific crystals for specific intentions—and I just couldn’t find exactly what I wanted.
So I decided to make my own. The more I made, the more my friends were interested. The more friends who burned my candles, the more encouragement I got to start selling them. I named my small venture Capeside Candles after Capeside, the hometown of Dawson Leery and friends in Dawson’s Creek. Capeside isn’t just a reference to a nineties teen drama, though. Capeside is the space where Cody and I escaped to when we were growing up, a real-life place we found together the first time we walked the streets of Wilmington and breathed in the river’s air. Capeside is where we found hope, where we grew up together, a place we look to still. Wilmington is the dreams of two teens living in the mountains dreaming of a life belonging to fictional teens living between an ocean, a river, and a creek.
When you burn my candles, I hope they make you feel the way Wilmington makes me feel: safe, loved, hopeful.
At home.
