Betts, Doris

Doris June Waugh Betts was a white North Carolina author and Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was born 4 June 1932 in Statesville, N.C., and graduated from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, N.C. Betts married Lowry Matthews Betts (1930-2007) in 1952 and with him had three children: Doris LewEllyn, David Lowry, and Erskine Moore.

Betts began her writing career as a newspaper reporter. She first gained notice as a fiction writer for her short stories and novels, including The Gentle Insurrection: And Other Stories (1954), Tall Houses in Winter (1957), and The Scarlet Thread (1964). In 1966, she joined the English Department faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the next 30 years, she taught English literature and creative writing and continued her steady production of novels, short stories, and articles, including "The Ugliest Pilgrim" (1969), which was turned into Violet, an award-winning movie and Broadway play; Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories (1973); and Souls Raised from the Dead (1994). Among many honors, Betts received the G.P. Putnam Booklength Fiction Prize (1954); the Sir Walter Raleigh Best Fiction by a North Carolinian award (1957, 1965, and 1974); a Guggenheim fellowship (1958); the North Carolina Medal (1975); the American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal of Merit (1989); and the Southern Book Award (1995).