Doris Betts
Doris Betts is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at UNC-Chapel Hill and has written six novels and three short-story collections. Her fiction, set mostly in North Carolina, depicts ordinary people showing extraordinary perseverance and tenacious common sense in the face of life's troubles. Three of her books: Tall Houses in Winter, The Scarlet Thread and Beasts of the Southern Wild and other Stories won Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Fiction from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. Betts' other books are The Gentle Insurrection and Other Stories, The Astronomer and Other Stories, The River to Pickle Beach, Heading West, The Sharp Teeth of Love and Souls Raised From the Dead, which won the Southern Book Award and was named one of the 20 best books of 1994 by The New York Times. The most widely printed of her stories, "The Ugliest Pilgrim," became an Academy Award winner as a short film, Violet, and in 1998 was the basis of a musical that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Betts' honors include the North Carolina Award for Literature, the UNC Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching and the North Carolinian Society Award for contributions to the state's literary and cultural heritage. The UNC-Chapel Hill faculty honored her with the Thomas Jefferson Award in recognition of her academic and personal contributions to the University and the state of North Carolina. She served a term as the Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The Doris Betts Distinguished Professorship in creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill was established in honor of Betts, who taught fiction writing in the creative writing program for 32 years. She lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina.
