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