Kaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina in 1960. She graduated from Rocky Mount High School and continued her education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at Chapel Hill, she wrote her first novel, Ellen Foster, which reviewers and fans praised as an extraordinary debut. Eudora Welty said that "the honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word mark the work of this talented writer." Ellen Foster went on to win the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as numerous other awards. The book has been widely translated and has gained wide course adoption.