Pam Durban is the author of two novels, So Far Back (Picador, 2000) and The Laughing Place (Scribner's, 1993), as well as a collection of short fiction, All Set About with Fever Trees and Other Stories (Godine, 1985). Her stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999), The Best American Short Stories, 1997, both from Houghton Mifflin, and New Stories of the South, The Year's Best (Algonquin, 1988 and 1997 editions). Durban has won numerous awards for her work including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, the Crazyhorse Fiction Award, the Whiting Writer's Award and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in Fiction. A native of South Carolina, Durban received an MFA from the University of Iowa. She has taught at Ohio University and at Georgia State University, where she founded and co-edited the journal Five Points. She is currently the Doris Betts Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.