NC Literary Lights: The Literary Legacy of Doris Betts

Novelist and short story author Doris Betts' enduring characters have won her favorable comparisons to Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner throughout her long career. Among those characters is Violet, the scarred heroine of "The Ugliest Pilgrim" and “Violet,” the musical that short story inspired. Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy at the Progress Energy Center in Raleigh presents "Violet" this weekend. As part of our continuing series, North Carolina Literary Lights, host Frank Stasio talks about the play with director Eric Woodall and about Betts' literary legacy with Marianne Gingher, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Joe Flora, professor emeritus of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Lynn Veach Sadler, a Betts scholar and former vice president of Methodist University in Fayetteville.