ANGELA DAVIS-GARDNER

“Davis-Gardner skillfully renders the fine lines that connect sympathy, intimacy and menace.”
— The Washington Post

Angela Davis-Gardner was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and grew up in Greensboro.  Her father, mother, and brother were all writers as well, and the atmosphere created by visiting writers, editors, painters was an influence, as was the house in which they lived, an eighteenth-century cabin that her historian father believed had been the headquarters of the British Colonel Cornwallis during the penultimate battle of the Revolutionary War

Davis-Gardner attended Duke University and earned an MFA at the University of NC at Greensboro. Her first teaching job, at Tsuda College in Tokyo, Japan, changed the course of her writing.  Her two most recent novels, BUTTERFLY’S CHILD and PLUM WINE, had their inception in her life-long interest in Japanese-American relations. The chief concern of her fiction, however, lies in the complexities of family relationships, whether the novels and stories are set in the United States, Japan, or French-speaking Nova Scotia, where her grandmother was raised. For years, her life was a rich turmoil of mothering, teaching, and writing novels.

After working as a journalist and editor, Davis-Gardner returned to teaching, at Guilford College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and North Carolina State University.  She spent most of her teaching career at North Carolina State University, where she won many awards for teaching undergraduates and graduate students in the MFA program.  Now retired from her university position, Angela teaches private classes and continues to publish fiction and personal essays.

Author Website: ANGELA DAVIS-GARDNER