wfn.org | Writers Guild Honors Novelist Doris Betts

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18-June-1998 
GA98104 
 
            Writers Guild Honors Novelist Doris Betts 
 
                          by Eva Stimson 
 
CHARLOTTE, N.C.--"Everything I Know About Writing I Learned in Sunday 
School" was the title of an address by North Carolina novelist Doris Betts 
at an Assembly luncheon sponsored by the Presbyterian Writers Guild. 
Betts, an elder in Pittsboro (N.C.) Presbyterian Church, received the 
Guild's 1998 Distinguished Writer of the Year award. 
   She is a professor of creative writing at the University of North 
Carolina at Chapel Hill and is the author of such novels as "Souls Raised 
^From the Dead" and, most recently, "The Sharp Teeth of Love," published 
last year by Alfred A. Knopf.  "Heading West," a novel published in 1981, 
was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. 
   Comparing her own work with that of last year's Distinguished Writer, 
Kathleen Norris, author of "The Cloister Walk" and "Amazing Grace," Betts 
said, "Ms. Norris is a writer directly using language to make theology real 
in our time.  I am only a storyteller whose themes are informed by faith, 
but do not preach it." 
   Betts told about a Presbyterian reader who mailed back one of Betts's 
books complaining that it was "filthy."  This reader had taken a marker and 
blacked out everything in the book she found offensive.  "When I saw that 
her first casualty was the mere mention of Jack Daniels' bourbon whiskey," 
Betts said, "I knew there was no need to look any further."  She mailed the 
unhappy reader a refund check. 
   "Such readers want us writers to set a good example in literature," 
Betts continued, "to pretend that people do not drink, shack up, commit 
incest and blasphemy either to take sin out of the world entirely, or to 
punish it more thoroughly than real life does." 
   Betts reflected on how her own religious upbringing has influenced her 
writing.  She said the Bible has taught her about the power of stories and 
concrete language, the uses of metaphor and irony, and techniques of 
fictional viewpoint and characterization. 
   "I'm very grateful," Betts concluded, "that this group has really had 
ears to hear, and been able to hear me whisper the faith, even in stories 
that sometimes seemed grim and uninspiring with characters who drink Jack 
Daniels' whiskey." 
   Three other awards were presented by the Presbyterian Writers Guild. 
Longtime Presbyterian journalist and poet James A. Gittings received a 
Lifetime Service Award.  Gittings is the author of seven books, including 
"A Company of Pilgrims," and numerous articles in more than 100 newspapers 
and magazines.  He also was editor of the former "A.D." magazine. 
   The Jim Angell Award for the best first book was presented to the Rev. 
Duke Robinson, author of "Good Intentions: The Nine Unconscious Mistakes of 
Nice People."  Robinson is a retired Presbyterian minister living in 
Oakland, Calif. 
   The Rev. Bill Lankton, of Park Forest, Ill., received the Old Editors 
Award for the best one-liner.  His submission: "If you're going to laugh 
about it later, you'd  better begin now." 

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