My two novels, Early Leaving and The Slow Way Back, were published by both William Morrow and HarperPerennial. The Slow Way Back was a finalist for Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Novel of the Year, winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award and the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Fiction (both from the N.C. Literary and Historical Association). My memoir, Losing My Sister (John F. Blair, Publisher), was a finalist for both SIBA’s Memoir of the Year and ForeWord Review’s Memoir of the year. I’m also the author of two books of poetry, Holding Back Winter and Wanting To Know the End, winner of the Gerald Cable Poetry Prize (publication awarded), as well as the Roanoke-Chowan Prize, Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize, and Oscar Arnold Young Prize – the three annual prizes awarded for a book of poetry by a North Carolinian.

My work has appeared in Real Simple magazine, Yankee magazine, Our State magazine, Charlotte magazine, many literary journals (The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, etc.) and anthologies. I’ve written book reviews for The Washington Post and The Charlotte Observer and craft articles for The Writer. My commentaries have aired on public radio in Charlotte and Chapel Hill.

I received the Hobson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, the Fortner Writer and Community Award (for outstanding generosity to other writers and the larger community), the Beverly D. Clark Author Award from Queens University, and a Regional Artist Project Grant from the N.C. Arts Council.

I live in Charlotte, NC, with my husband. We have two married children and four grandchildren.