Doris Betts was born on June 4, 1932, and passed away on April 21, 2012. She worked as a short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She was also an Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She wrote three short story collections and six novels.

Profile

Doris Betts was born in Statesville, North Carolina, in 1932. She was the only child of Mary Ellen and William Elmore. In 1950, she graduated from Statesville High School and attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While studying there, she married Lowry Betts, who later became a district judge in Chatham and Orange Counties, North Carolina. They had three children. During her sophomore year in 1953, she won the Mademoiselle College Fiction contest for her story "Mr. Shawn and Father Scott."

After working as a newspaper reporter for several years, Betts joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966. She received the UNC Putnam Book Prize in 1954 for her first book, The Gentle Insurrection. She also won three Sir Walter Raleigh Awards (1958, 1965, and 1973) for the best fiction books written by North Carolinians. In 1958–1959, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing. She was honored with the North Carolina Award and Medal in 1975, the Distinguished Service Award for Women (Chi Omega), and the John Dos Passos Award from Longwood College. Betts also wrote articles for professional journals, gave speeches at writers' conferences, and lectured on college campuses. In 1980, she was named a UNC Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. She received the Tanner Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching in 1973 and the Katherine Carmichael Teaching Award in 1980. She also corresponded with literary critic M. Bernetta Quinn.

A film adaptation of "The Ugliest Pilgrim," her most widely reprinted short story, titled Violet, won Best Live Action Short at the 54th Academy Awards. In 1998, a musical based on the same story, also named Violet, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

When Betts retired from teaching, the Doris Betts Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing, an endowed chair, was created in her honor. She also served as the Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

In 1998, producer Nancy Bevins adapted Betts's short story, "This is the Only Time I'll Tell It," into a short film. The film, which received a Humanities Council Grant, had its first showing at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with Betts in attendance.

Betts died at her home in Pittsboro, North Carolina, from lung cancer on April 21, 2012, at the age of 79.

Awards

• G.P. Putnam-U.N.C. Book-Length Fiction Prize, 1954
• Sir Walter Raleigh Best Fiction by a Carolinian Award, 1957, for Tall Houses in Winter; 1965, for Scarlet Thread
• Guggenheim Fellow, 1958
• North Carolina Medal, 1975, for literature
• Parker Award, 1982–1985, for literary achievement
• John dos Passos Award, 1983
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal of Merit, 1989, for short story
• Academy Award, for Violet

Works

• The Gentle Insurrection (1954)
• The Astronomer and Other Stories (1966)
• Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories (1973)

• Tall Houses in Winter (1957)
• The Scarlet Thread (1965)
• The River to Pickle Beach (1972)
• Heading West: A Novel (1981)
• Souls Raised from the Dead (1994)
• The Sharp Teeth of Love (1998)