Awards

  • Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from State of Virginia, 2010
  • Thomas Wolfe Award, 2010
  • North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, 2009
  • Southern Book Critics Circle Award, 2002 for The Last Girls
  • Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999
  • Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, 1995 – 1997
  • Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, 1991
  • Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature, 1988
  • North Carolina Award for Literature, 1984
  • Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Oral History, 1983 and Fair and Tender Ladies, 1989
  • O. Henry Awards, 1979 and 1981