"I process the world in two ways, through language and through the lens of my camera."
— Lee Zacharias
About Lee Zacharias
Lee Zacharias is the author of a collection of short stories, Helping Muriel Make It Through the Night; four novels, What a Wonderful World It Could Be, Across the Great Lake, Lessons, and At Random; and two collections of personal essays, The Only Sounds We Make and Remember Me.
She is also the co-editor of Runaway, an anthology of stories from Madville Publishing.
She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is a two-time recipient of North Carolina's Sir Walter Raleigh Award and has won Southern Humanities Review's Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award, Prairie Schooner's Glenna Luschei Award, and two Silver Medals from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (the IPPYs). At Random was a finalist in literary fiction for the 2013 International Book Awards, the National Indie Lit Awards, and the USA Best Book Awards. Across the Great Lake was named a 2019 Michigan Notable Book, received the 2020 Phillip H. McMath Book Award in Fiction, and was a finalist in literary fiction for the 2018 Foreword Indies Book of the Year as well as being named an Honorable Mention in Legacy Fiction by the 2023 International Book Awards.What a Wonderful World was chosen as a Pinnacle Achievement Best Book in Literary Fiction, a Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction by both the Independent Press Awards and the NYC Big Book Awards, and a Finalist in Literary Fiction by the American Fiction Awards.
Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including, among others, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, Outdoor Photographer, and Our State. Ten times her essays have been named Notable Essays of the Year by The Best American Essays, which reprinted her essay "Buzzards" in The Best American Essays 2008. For a decade she served as editor of The Greensboro Review.
She holds degrees from Indiana University, Hollins College, and the University of Arkansas, and has taught at Princeton University and the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she is Emerita Professor of English, as well as many conferences, most recently the Wildacres Writers Workshop.
The University of North Carolina College of Arts and Sciences, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, and the Southeast Modern Language Association have all recognized her with awards for teaching excellence.