Doris Betts
Fiction
Doris Betts was a short story writer, novelist, essayist and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 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), and the North Carolina Award and Medal (1975). Violet, a film adaptation of "The Ugliest Pilgrim," her most widely reprinted short story, won Best Live Action Short at the 54th Academy Awards. In 1998, it was the basis of a musical, also named Violet, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.
