SOURCE: “Interview with Doris Betts,” in Southern Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2, Winter, 1996, pp. 91–104.

In the following interview, Betts discusses her philosophical and religious beliefs as well as the treatment of race relations in her work.

“I have never found life, faith, nor art really so neat. I continue to outlive many days surveying this world with the suspicion that Deus has really absconded. With the funds.”

Doris Betts is an elder, a Sunday school teacher and part-time organist in the Presbyterian Church. A former chairperson of the faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has taught in the English Department for more than twenty-five years. From 1978 to 1981, she served on the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and since 1980 has occupied the position of Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. Mother, grandmother and wife, Professor Betts lives on a farm near Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Since...