Angela Davis-Gardner

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1942, Angela was raised in Greensboro and attended Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, studying creative writing.

Following her education, Angela traveled to Japan to teach English at Tsuda College, a prestigious women’s university, for a year. This trip would provide many sparks of inspiration for much of her creative work decades later.

She got her start as a writer in journalism — she was a reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer and wrote here and there for certain magazines – but she expected her job to be that of a full-time mother when her son Heath was born in 1983. She had just published her first novel, Felice, with Random House and looked forward to staying at home and writing another book.

When things didn’t work out as she’d hoped on the home front, and she became a single mother, instead of giving up, she dug in, showing an uncommon tenacity and dedication to her own artistic craft as she built a life for herself and her son, working as a creative writing professor at North Carolina State University, where her fiction writing workshops would one day become an institution unto themselves.

Her son recalls that she was always reading student stories and working on her writing projects, and yet she found time to be a very present mother as well. She would go on to achieve great things as both a teacher (she was a Distinguished Professor Emerita at North Carolina State University, receiving numerous honors for her teaching) and as a novelist.

Angela wrote four widely admired novels—Felice, Forms of Shelter, Plum Wine, and Butterfly’s Child—as well as many short stories and essays. Across her work, she explored family life, memory, displacement, and the quiet forces that shape intimate relationships.

Her teaching work continued even up to the weeks before her death, as she remained dedicated to helping writers that would come to her house for weekly workshops.

Angela is remembered for her formidable mind, her unwavering courage and determination, and for the life she made through language; as a writer and a teacher who helped others find their own voices.

There will be a memorial service, but due to her son Heath’s cancer – he was scheduled to have his kidney removed days after learning of her death – the family will reach out about timing to her many friends and family members.

She is survived by her son, Heath and her daughter-in-law, Jenny McPhee. She also leaves behind many beloved friends, students and former students, and fellow authors, and a dog, Alice, who will join Heath and Jenny. Her family would especially like to thank her writing cohort.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Sierra Club, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, American Civil Liberties Union, or the SPCA of Wake County.

Brown-Wynne, 300 Saint Mary's St., Raleigh, NC, is serving the Davis-Gardner family.