Kaye Gibbons was born in
Nash County,
North Carolina in 1960. She graduated from
Rocky Mount High School and then went to the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She wrote her first novel,
Ellen Foster while in college.
Her second novel, A Virtuous Woman , was published in 1989. Both novels have been chosen for Oprah’s book club. In 1989, Gibbons received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to write a third novel, A Cure for Dreams , which was published in 1991.
Her next book , Charms for the Easy Life , was published in March 1993. It was a New York Times bestseller, as was her fifth book Sights Unseen . Her latest book is On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon
A reviewer in Time magazine was quoted as saying of her "Some people might give up their second-born to write as well as Kaye Gibbons." In 1996, Kaye Gibbons was the youngest writer ever to receive the Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a French knighthood recognizing her contribution to French literature.