Daphne Athas
Daphne Athas moved to Chapel Hill as a teenager and graduated from the university in 1943. As a writing student, she worked with Betty Smith and Phillips Russell. In 1964, she joined the English department faculty to teach creative writing. Her best-known work is Entering Ephesus (1971), a coming-of-age novel set in an academic village (like Chapel Hill) where her characters are a mix of intellectuals, poor southerners, and Greek immigrants.