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Previous Winners of Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture

Allison Hedge Coke (2023)

Notable Works:

  • Dog Road Woman
  • Off-Season City Pipe
  • Blood Run
  • Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer
  • Look at This Blue, a poem
Photo credit: Michael Avedon

Percival Everett (2022)

Notable Works:

  • The Trees
  • Telephone
  • So Much Blue
  • I Am Not Sidney Poitier
  • Erasure
Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni (2021)

Notable Works

  • Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be
  • Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater
  • Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush
  • A Meatloaf in Every Oven: Two Chatty Cooks, One Iconic Dish, and Dozens of Recipes

Michael Parker (2020)

Notable Works:

  • Hello Down There
  • Towns Without Rivers
  • Virginia Lovers
  • If You Want Me To Stay
  • The Watery Part of the World
  • All I Have In This World

Dorothy Allison (2019)

Notable Works:

  • Bastard Out of Carolina
  • Trash
  • Two or Three Things I Know for Sure
  • Cavedweller
  • Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature)

Gillian Welch (2018)

Notable Works:

  • Revival
  • Hell Among the Yearlings
  • Time (The Revelator)
  • Soul Journey
  • The Harrow and The Harvest
  • Soul Journey LP

Kevin Young (2017)

Notable Works:

  • Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015
  • Jelly Rolls: a blues, Dear Darkness
  • Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Jill McCorkle (2016)

Notable Works:

  • Life After Life
  • Going Away Shoes
  • Creatures of Habit
  • Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories
  • Carolina Moon
  • The Cheer Leader

Clyde Edgerton (2015)

Notable Works:

  • Rainey
  • Walking Across Egypt
  • Floatplane Notebooks
  • Lunch at the Piccadilly
  • Last Night Train

Sandra Cisneros (2014)

Notable Works:

  • My Wicked Wicked Ways
  • Loose Woman
  • Woman Hollering Creek
  • Caramelo
  • Have You Seen Marie?

Ron Rash (2013)

Notable Works:

  • Eureka Mill
  • One Foot in Eden
  • Serena
  • The Cove

Josephine Humphreys (2012)

Notable Works:

  • Dreams of Sleep
  • Rich in Love
  • The Fireman’s Fair
  • Nowhere Else on Earth

Al Young (2011)

Notable Works:

  • Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry
  • Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006
  • Seduction By Light

Lee Smith (2010)

Notable Works:

  • Oral History
  • Fair and Tender Ladies
  • The Last Girls
  • Me and My Baby View the Eclipse
  • Mr. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger

Roy Blount, Jr. (2009)

Notable Works:

  • Alphabet Juice
  • Crackers
  • Roy Blount’s Book of Southern Humor
  • First Hubby
  • Robert E. Lee

Robert Morgan (2008)

Notable Works:

  • Gap Creek
  • The Strange Attractor: New & Selected Poems
  • Boone: A Biography

Reynolds Price (2007)

Notable Works:

  • A Generous Man
  • The Surface of Earth
  • Blue Calhoun
  • The Good Priest’s Son
  • A Whole New Life

George Garrett (2006)

Notable Works:

  • Death of the Fox
  • Do, Lord, Remember Me

Fred Chappell (2005)

Notable Works:

  • Midquest
  • I Am One of You Forever

Ellen Gilchrist (2004)

Notable Works:

  • In the Land of Dreamy Dreams
  • Victory Over Japan
  • Ellen Gilchrist: Collected Stories

Pat Conroy (2003)

Notable Works:

  • Prince of Tides
  • The Lords of Discipline
  • The Great Santini
  • Beach Music

Elizabeth Spencer (2002)

Notable Works:

  • The Voice at the Backdoor
  • The Light in the Piazza and Other Stories
  • The Salt Line
  • Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir

Larry Brown (2001)

Notable Works:

  • Joe
  • Fay
  • Dirty Work
  • Facing the Music: Stories
  • Big Bad Love: Stories

Tom Wolfe (2000)

Notable Works:

  • The Right Stuff
  • Bonfire of the Vanities
  • A Man in Full