October 19, 2006

 

Best-Selling Author and Nash County Native Kaye Gibbons

Reads from Her Work November 7 at NC Wesleyan College

 

Rocky Mount, N.C.— Best-selling author Kaye Gibbons will read from her work on Tuesday, November 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the Dunn Center at North Carolina Wesleyan College. The presentation is free and the public is invited to the reading and a reception and book-signing to follow.

Kaye Gibbons’ appearance is part of the Speakers’ Series that celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Wesleyan’s founding in 1956. The event is sponsored by Wesleyan and the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce.

Kay Gibbons was born in Nash County in 1960 on Bend of the River Road. She attended North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American and English literature. At 26, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster, which was acclaimed as an extraordinary first novel and was honored in London as one of the Twenty Greatest Novels of the Twentieth Century. In 1997, the novel received the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction as well as other prestigious awards. The book has been widely translated, performed in theaters nationwide, and was produced by Hallmark Hall of Fame for CBS.

In 1989, Gibbons published A Virtuous Woman, which also received widespread praise. Both Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman were featured together as Oprah Book Club selections in 1998 and led The New York Times bestseller list for many weeks.

Her third novel, the award-winning A Cure for Dreams, was published in 1991. In 1993 she published Charms for the Easy Life; in 1995 Sights Unseen also became a national bestseller, followed by On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, which many regarded as her most brilliant to date.

In 1997, Gibbons was awarded a Knighthood from the French Minister of Culture for her contributions to French literature.

In 2004, Divining Women was released, followed by The Other Side of Air. Gibbons’ most recent work, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, is the sequel to Ellen Foster and the first installment in a continuing series.

Gibbons has three daughters and divides her time between her native North Carolina and New York.