wfn.org | Doris Betts Wins Presbyterian Writers Guild Award

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

20-January-1998 
98011 
 
    Doris Betts Wins Presbyterian Writers Guild Award 
 
    by Vic Jameson 
 
CHARLOTTE, N.C.--Doris Betts, a Presbyterian elder and prolific author, has 
been chosen to receive the 1998 Distinguished Writer of the Year award from 
the Presbyterian Writers Guild. 
 
    The award will be presented at the annual Writers Guild luncheon, set 
for June 18 in connection with the 210th General Assembly, which meets here 
June 13-20. 
 
    Betts is professor of English at the University of North Carolina at 
Chapel Hill, a position she has held since 1980.  She is the author of nine 
books, including six novels.  Her latest, "The Sharp Teeth of Love," was 
published by Knopf in 1997.  "Heading West," a novel published in 1981 was 
a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. 
 
    A native of Statesville, N.C., Betts began writing for the Statesville 
"Daily Record" while a teenager and later wrote for newspapers in 
Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Sanford.  She won her 
first writing award at age 21 and has since received additional honors for 
short stories, collections of stories and novels. 
 
    Betts, the 11th winner of the Distinguished Writer Award, is an elder, 
Sunday school teacher and sometime organist in the Pittsboro (N.C.) 
Presbyterian Church.  She and her husband, attorney Matthews Betts, have a 
daughter and two sons. 
 
    The Presbyterian Writers Guild, organized 21 years ago, works in 
support of Presbyterians for whom writing is a full-time or part-time 
vocation.  It has more than 200 members. 

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