North Carolina writer Kaye Gibbons has overcome a great deal of adversity in her life: losing her mother to suicide; moving from one family member to another after her abusive father's death from alcoholism; suffering the effects of manic depression;...

Kaye Gibbons burst upon the American literary scene at the age of twenty-seven with publication of her Southern coming-of-age novel, Ellen Foster. This short novel tells the story of plucky, spirited Ellen, eleven going on thirty, a survivor who faces...

KAYE GIBBONS WAS IN PARIS WITH HER DAUGHTER MARY LAST SUMMER when they ran into Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours. "I know your name!" Mary said. "My mom has your book in the car, in the living room, in the bedroom and...

On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon. By Kaye Gibbons. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 273 pages. $22.95. Few writers can capture the emotions of the human heart like Kaye Gibbons. From the moment readers picked up her spectacular first novel, "Ellen Foster," in 1987,...