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Biography

Kaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina in 1960. She graduated from Rocky Mount High School and continued her education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at Chapel Hill, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster, which reviewers and fans praised as an extraordinary debut. Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word mark the work of this talented writer." Ellen Foster went on to win the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as numerous other awards. The book has been widely translated and has gained wide course adoption. Her second novel, A Virtuous Woman, was published in 1989 and also received wide praise in the United States and abroad. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "a perfect little gem."

In 1989, Gibbons received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write a third novel, A Cure for Dreams, which was published in 1991. This novel won the 1990/PEN Revson Award for the best work of fiction published by a writer under 35, as well as the Heartland Prize for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune and the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award.

Her fourth book, Charms for the Easy Life, was published in March 1993. It was a New York Times bestseller and prompted a Time magazine review to say, "Some people might give up their second-born to write as well as Kaye Gibbons." Her fifth book, Sights Unseen, was also a national bestseller. In 1996, Kaye Gibbons was the youngest writer ever to receive the Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a French knighthood recognizing her contribution to French literature.