TABLE OF CONTENTS  |  FRONT PAGE  |  NEXT ARTICLE |  PREVIOUS ARTICLE  |  UNC HOMEPAGE

Creative writing professor named

Rosa P. (Pam) Durban -- whose writing is included in a collection of the best American short stories of the past century -- has been named the Doris Betts distinguished professor of creative writing at Carolina.

Durban's appointment was approved Aug. 10 by the UNC Board of Governors.

Durban began teaching this fall as a visiting professor and will become the Betts professor in January.

The new endowed chair in the Department of English is named for the University's renowned professor of creative writing -- a nationally recognized Southern voice in American literature -- who retired this year after more than 35 years at the University.

"Doris Betts has had a profound influence on American literature as an acclaimed author of a vast body of work and as an inspiring teacher of many up-and-coming writers," said Risa Palm, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "How fitting it is that Pam Durban, considered one of the most important writers of her generation and an outstanding teacher, will be our Doris Betts Professor. Pam will be an excellent addition to our distinguished Creative Writing Program."

Durban, director of the Creative Writing Program at Georgia State University in Atlanta, is the author of three books, including two novels, So Far Back and The Laughing Place, and a collection of short fiction, All Set About with Fever Trees and Other Stories. Her stories have been published in prominent anthologies including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, co-edited by John Updike; The Best American Short Stories 1997, edited by E. Annie Proulx; and New Stories of the South, The Year's Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel.

She was also the founder and co-editor of Five Points, a literary magazine that received the Best New Journal Award in 1998 from the National Council of Literary Magazines.

Durban was born and raised in Aiken, S.C., and received her bachelor's degree from UNC-Greensboro in 1969 and her master's of fine arts degree from the University of Iowa's writing program in 1979. She has won numerous awards for her work including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship ,the James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, the Crazyhorse Fiction Award, the Whiting Writer's Award and the Rinehart Award in Fiction.

She has taught at Georgia State since 1986. Before that she directed the Creative Writing Program at Ohio University from 1981 to 1986.

"I am thrilled and honored to be joining the Carolina faculty," Durban said. "I'm thrilled at the prospect of working with great students and faculty there, and honored to be occupying the chair named for such a fine writer."

Fred Chappell, noted writer and distinguished professor of English at UNC-Greensboro, wrote of Durban's 1993 novel: "Sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, page to page, its bittersweet understanding, its hard-won and beautifully articulated perspicuity, its observation not only of the cores of its characters but of their abraded surfaces, its employment of expressive detail -- all these are present and ordered nigh unto perfection."

Frederick Bush, a distinguished professor of literature at Colgate University, wrote of Durban's work: "She has made, and she now brilliantly makes, a language, held like nitroglycerine in a steady, cold grip, that is an American sound and that is concerned with broad American issues. She explores matters of urban as well as rural life; she investigates commerce and curatorship; she evaluates the steady tread of industry upon the national landscape. And, of course, she also stares hard at the relationship of black and white, and at the uneasy marriage of cultures we call contemporary America."

The Doris Betts professorship, Carolina's first endowed chair in creative writing, was established with a major gift from 1950 alumnus Ben M. Jones III, of Naples, Fla., and Hendersonville. More than 200 individuals also contributed to the professorship.

The University's Creative Writing Program -- established in 1967 and designed to encourage undergraduate writers -- is considered one of the best in the country.

Durban wins southern fiction award

Pam Durban, Carolina's new Doris Betts distinguished professor of creative writing, has won the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Fiction for her novel So Far Back. The Smith Awards are presented annually by the Southern Regional Council of Atlanta to recognize and encourage outstanding writing about the American South.

In her novel, Durban moves back and forth across centuries and racial divides to reveal the intertwining lives of four Southern women: Louisa Hilliard Marion, the aging and last surviving member of a prominent Charleston, S.C. family; her great-grandmother Eliza Hilliard; Diana, a young slave in the Hilliard household; and Evelyn, Diana's great-granddaughter, a successful business woman and former Hilliard servant.

"Reading Pam Durban's So Far Back was like moving back in time and coming into the full experience of Louisa Hilliard and her privileged white life, as well as Diana, a slave whose strong sense of self and talent make her equality so visible," said Elizabeth Cox, 2001 Smith jury members and 1999 Smith Award winner. "The language Durban uses to present time and race is well-researched and convincing."

The Lillian Smith Awards honor authors who, through their writing, carry on Smith's legacy of elucidating the condition of racial and social inequity and proposing a vision of justice and human understanding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS  |  FRONT PAGE  |  NEXT ARTICLE |  PREVIOUS ARTICLE  |  UNC HOMEPAGE