Doris Betts

Doris Betts was the author of six novels and three collections of short stories. Her many awards include the John Dos Passos Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal of Merit, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing, The North Carolina Award, the Distinguished Service Award for Women, and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, which she won three times. Her story "Mr. Shawn and Father Scott" won the Mademoiselle College Fiction contest during her sophomore year (1953) at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina—now UNC-Greensboro. Her short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” was made into Violet, a live action short film that became the basis for a musical by the same name. The movie won an Academy Award, and the musical won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Ms. Betts joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966 and in 1980 was named a UNC Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. Coinciding with her retirement from teaching, an endowed chair was named in her honor, The Doris Betts Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing.