Awards
- North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, 2009
- Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award for On Agate Hill, 2007
- The Last Girls won a Southern Book Critics Circle Award for 2002
- Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, 1999
- Lila Wallace / Reader's Digest Award, 1995-1997
- Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, 1991
- Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, 1991
- Lyndhurst Grant, 1990-92
- 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
Lee’s new book, Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger, will be published in March, 2010 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. It is a collection of new and selected stories.
