SOURCE: “Conversations with Doris Betts,” in The South Carolina Review, Vol. 28, Spring, 1996, pp. 4–8.

In the following interview, which took place in 1994, Betts reflects on her relationship with Diarmuid Russell and describes her creative process.

[Elizabeth Evans]: I was so happy to hear and read what you said about Anne's [Tyler] St. Maybe.

[Doris Betts]: It's become one of my real favorites. And it's so bizarre that she should have gotten the Pulitzer for a book [Breathing Lessons] that is not the best. I mean several before that were wonderful. And then St. Maybe would have been, I think, perfect.

It [St. Maybe] was a real change for her.

I thought it was brave.

Certainly it has a Christian theme: he who loses his life, etc.

And all the more odd because knowing that she has a Quaker background she has chosen to use such a fundamentalist sect that...