Doris Betts(1932-2012)
- Writer
Doris June Betts (nee) Waugh was born in Statesville, North Carolina in
1932, 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 an undergraduate student she
married then law student Lowry Betts, who later became a district judge
in Chatham and Orange Counties, North Carolina; they had three
children. She won the Mademoiselle College Fiction contest during her
sophomore year (1953) for the story "Mr. Shawn and Father Scott". After
working as a newspaper reporter for a number of years, she 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, three Sir Walter Raleigh Awards (1958, 1965, and
1973) for the best fiction books by a North Carolinian, a Guggenheim
Fellowship in Creative Writing (1958-1959), the North Carolina Award
and Medal (1975), the Distinguished Service Award for Women (Chi
Omega), and the John Dos Passos Award from Longwood College. She has
also written articles for professional journals, lectured at writers'
conferences, and delivered speeches on major college campuses. In 1980
she was named a UNC Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. She
received the Tanner Award for distinguished undergraduate teaching in
1973 and the Katherine Carmichael Teaching Award in 1980. The Ugliest
Pilgrim", the most widely printed of her stories, became an Academy
Award winner as a short film titled "Violet", and in 1998 was the basis
of a musical that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
Coinciding with her retirement from teaching, an endowed chair was
named in her honor, The Doris Betts Distinguished Professor in Creative
Writing. She served as the Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern
Writers.