Interests and Information
Fixed Term Faculty, Department of English
(919) 962-5481
Daphne Athas
Daphne Athas has been a Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program since 1968. Entering Ephesus (a novel) was included on TIME’s Ten Best Fiction List in 1971 and was a Cosmopolitan Book-Club selection. Cora (a novel) won the Sir Raleigh Award. She has been Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Tehran, has published both fiction and non fiction including travel, poetry, drama and literary criticism, and received the University’s Lifetime Mentor Award in 1982. Her work has appeared in many journals and periodicals including “South Atlantic Quarterly,” ”Frank”, “New World Writing”, “Botteghe Oscure”, Shenandoah”, “American Letters and Commentary”, “Chicago Tribune Book World”, Transatlantic Review”, “Hudson Review”, College English”, Philadelphia Inquirer, “The World and I”, and others.
Her latest book (2007), the maverick grammar text, Gram-O-Rama: Breaking the Rules, edited by Marianne Gingher, former head of Creative Writing, addresses the gap between classic grammar and cyber sound-byte-language through hearing, word-play, and performance art.
U.S. PUBLICATIONS:
- The Weather of the Heart, 1947. Novel. Appleton Century, New York.
- The Fourth World, 1956. Novel. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Reprint 1957: Pyramid Books, New York.
- Greece by Prejudice, 1963. Travel Memoir. J. B. Lippincott, New York.
- Entering Ephesus. 1971 Novel. Viking Press, New York. Republished 1991 as Twentieth Anniversary Classic edition by Permanent Press, Sag Harbor, New York.
- Cora. Novel. 1978 Viking Press, New York.
- Crumbs for the Bogeyman. 1991. Poems. St. Andrew's Press, Laurinburg, North Carolina.
- Gram-O-Rama: Breaking the Rules, 2007. A Maverick Language Book. iUniverse, New York, Lincoln, and Shanghai.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS:
- Sit on the Earth, 1957, Play, in The Observer Plays, Faber, London. Play (Co-authored with Gurney Campbell. Second prize in London Observer Playwriting Contest.
- The Fourth World, 1957. Secker and Warburg, London ,1958, Robert Laffont, Paris under the title: Ces Qui Vivent dans La Nuit.
- Entering Ephesus, 1972. Chatto and Windus, London.
- Gram-O-Rama: Breaking the Rules, 2007, edited by Marianne Gingher, available in the UK, France, Netherlands and Sweden.
THEATER, MOVIE AND RADIO ACTIVITY:
- Ding Dong Bell (Play based on Sit on the Earth, co-authored by Gurney Campbell): Produced by Theater Guild at Westport Country Playhouse, Connecticut, September 1961 with a cast that included Albert Dekker, Alvin Ailey, and Lois Smith.
- The Fourth World: Optioned twice for movies, by William Wyler for Warner brothers and by Jose Quintero, Theater Director. Neither reached production.
- Entering Ephesus: Optioned by Diana Barrymore for her production company in 1993 but did not achieve production.
- Wordplay: Radio series of twenty 3-minute spots broadcast live on WCHL, Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1986.
OTHER HONORS AND AWARDS:
MacDowell fellowships: 1961 and 1962; National Endowment for the Arts Awards:1969 and 1980; Sir Walter Raleigh Awards, 1972 and 1979; citation Pushcart Prize Collection 1984 as Outstanding Writer in Non-Fiction; Katherine Kennedy Carmichael Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1987; citation by Esquire 1992 in recognition of her standing as one of the nurturers of young writers in the nation; North Carolina Writers Conference Tribute to Daphne Athas, 47th Annual Meeting, 1995; Honorary Doctorate of Letters St. Andrews College 1997; special Issue of Pembroke Magazine #29, 1997 devoted to her work and life,
PRAISE FOR BOOKS:
The Weather of the Heart
“The quality of Miss Athas’s fantasy is almost frighteningly unhampered. On the one hand (she) can generate her largest dramatic conflicts out of something so apparently trivial as the murder of a pet canary. On the other hand, she can match Faulkner in the imagination of aberrant human behavior.” --Diana Trilling, The Nation.
The Fourth World
“In the Bible, both Luke and Matthew are agreed that if the blind lead the blind, both will wind up in the ditch. In The Fourth World, Novelist Daphne Athas does more than underwrite the common sense of the Gospels… the world into which she leads the reader…. the world (of a school for the blind), as eerie and haunting as any that… fiction is apt to produce, would seem simply nightmarish if it did not also ring simply true.” --Time Magazine
Greece by Prejudice
“I don’t know when I have met with a more individual, immediate and joyous perception of essential Greece… The writing is brilliant, both in quality and tone. This is a luminous book.” --Mary Renault, author of The Persian Boy.
Entering Ephesus
“This is a large novel which takes its time, a conducted tour with tempting stopovers and shopping-pauses at many points within a well-known Southern landscape: the fire which is in its belly is considerable, is largely female and Promethean, amoral, devouring, a headlong seeking of height in the perverse depths.” --The Times Literary Supplement.
Cora
“This novel is extraordinary… The author says, “To a Greek an emotion is not valid unless it is shared.” True now, true in the Greek chorus. As I felt the shock of recognition on almost every page I wondered if the book would mean as much to someone who did not know Greece. That now seems a fatuous thought… I thought it was a blockbuster.” --Jacquelyn Bouvier Onassis, Editor, Viking Press, 1971.
Gram-O-Rama: Breaking the Rules: edited by Marianne Gingher
“A sophisticated, witty, instructional text that delights as it stretches the mind toward the possibilities of stylistic excellence. “ -- Charles Schuster, College Editor Boynton/Cook Publishers
“Beware. Gram,-O-Rama is a dangerous book… It takes the cautions and rules of grammar and drops them into a fun-house. You could make a movie of this book. Or at least a theme park.” --Dave Krinsky, writer-producer of TV series, King of the Hill