NEWS

Doris Betts elected chancellor of Southern writers fellowship

CHAPEL HILL -- Doris Betts, an acclaimed novelist and writer of short stories and Alumni Distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been elected chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

She succeeds George Garrett of the University of Virginia as chancellor. Named vice chancellor was Walter Sullivan of the University of the South, who replaced Elizabeth Spencer of Chapel Hill.

The election was held at the fellowship's biennial Southern literature conference, held April 3-5 in Chattanooga, Tenn. The group meets in odd-numbered years along with the Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature, which sponsored panels, speeches and book-signings that attracted about 1,000 people. Events included a musical program led by UNC-CH graduate Jim Wann, a longtime member of the Red Clay Ramblers, based on a story by Lee Smith of Hillsborough and a fellowship member.

Now a decade old, the fellowship is the regional equivalent of the Academy of Arts and Letters, with membership by invitation only and with a cap on total invitees. Founding members included Chapel Hillians Blyden Jackson and Louis Rubin, retired professors at UNC-CH, and Elizabeth Spencer, novelist and short story writer.

Other founding members were Fred Chappell, a poet and professor at UNC-Greensboro; the late Cleanth Brooks; George Core, critic and professor at the University of the South; UNC-CH alumnus Shelby Foote, a novelist and Civil War historian; George Garrett, a novelist now teaching at the University of Virginia; the late Andrew Lytle, one of the original Southern agrarians; Lewis Simpson, a poet retired from the Louisiana State University faculty; and historian C. Vann Woodward.

Portraits of living fellowship members -- including Horton Foote, Gail Godwin, John Hope Franklin, Reynolds Price, William Styron and Eudora Welty -- hang in a special room of the Lupton Library at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where their works are collected along with members who have died. They are the late Cleanth Brooks, James Dickey, Ralph Ellison, Andrew Lytle, UNC-CH graduate Walker Percy and Peter Taylor.

Betts joined the UNC-CH faculty in 1966 as a creative writing lecturer. During her tenure, she has directed the creative writing curriculum and served as assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in charge of the honors program. She became the first woman elected faculty chair in 1982. Winner of several teaching excellence awards, Betts was the featured speaker at Carolina's University Day convocation last October.

Betts' work has earned multiple honors, including three Sir Walter Raleigh Awards, the N.C. Medal for Literature, the John Dos Passos Prize, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Medal and an Academy Award for "The Ugliest Pilgrim," a short story that was made into a film. Her most recently published novel was "Souls Raised from the Dead." A new novel, "The Sharp Teeth of Love," will be published this spring.

Newly inducted members of the fellowship are James Applewhite, poet, Duke University; Richard Bausch, George Mason University; Clyde Edgerton of Chapel Hill; William Hoffman, a West Virginia native and short story writer; and Dave Smith, poet and editor of The Southern Review.

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Contact: Mike McFarland