The Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture honor the memory of one of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s most famous alumni, Thomas Clayton Wolfe (Class of 1920). Established in 1999 with an endowed gift to the Department of English, the program recognizes contemporary writers with distinguished bodies of work. And in doing so, the program seeks to give University students and the surrounding community the opportunity to hear important writers of their time.

The Department of English bestows this prize each fall, around the time of Wolfe’s October 3 birthday. In addition to receiving prize money and a medal, the honored writer comes to campus as the University’s guest and delivers a lecture, which is free and open to the public. This event is a well-attended major campus and community occasion.

This year's speaker will be Ben Fountain. Fountain has established himself as one of our country’s most important writers. At once literary, political, specific, and expansive, his work beautifully articulates through story the widening gulf between American ideals and reality. He has earned a place in a lineage of authors that includes Robert Stone, Joan Didion, Graham Greene, and John LeCarré.  

Fountain’s contributions to our literature have not gone unnoticed. His books have received the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/ Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and a Whiting Award, among many other honors. His novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was a finalist for the National Book Award.  

Fountain graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1980, having studied under some of the brightest lights in the Creative Writing Program: Doris Betts, Marianne Gingher, and Louis Rubin. “Doris put me in the canoe with a paddle,” Fountain says, “and then Marianne gave me a big stiff push out into the current.” He wrote his senior thesis, directed by Louis Rubin, on the Fugitive poet Allen Tate.