Restrictions to Access

Items in box 5 relating to two unpublished novels, "Water Witch "and "Something Solid," and to the musical play, "Writer's Bloc," are closed until the works are published or Ellyn Bache elects to open the files.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Ellyn Bache Papers #04980, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from Ellyn Bache of Wilmington, N.C., in May 1999 (Acc. 98373) and January 2002 (Acc. 99159).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Full processing of this collection has been deferred pending expected additions.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American fiction--North Carolina--Women authors.
• Bache, Ellyn.
• Chapel Hill (N.C.)--Fiction.
• College students--North Carolina--Chapel Hill--Fiction.
• Southern States--Fiction.
• Southern States--Race relations--Fiction.
• Southern States--Social life and customs--Fiction.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Students--Political activity.
• Women authors, American--North Carolina--20th century.

Author Ellyn Bache grew up in Washington, D.C., attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the mid-1960s, and made her home in Maryland until moving back to North Carolina in 1985.

Initially a freelance journalist, Bache published at least 40 short stories in magazines such as McCall's, Woman's World, Virginia Country, The Antietam Review, and Woman (England). She also published numerous articles in newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Sun-Times, the Washington Star, the Sun Magazine, and the Morning Herald . Her novel, The Activist's Daughter (Spinster's Ink, 1997), is set amid the racial unrest of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during 1963. Another novel, Safe Passage (Crown, 1988) was developed for the screen and released to theaters in 1995. Her novel, Festival in Fire Season (August House, 1992), is set in a fictionalized Wilmington/Wrightville Beach, N.C., and deals with, among other things, the Azalea Festival and the fires that ravaged southeast North Carolina in 1986. Sixteen of her short stories were collected in The Value of Kindness (Helicon Nine Editions, 1993), which won the 1992 Willa Cather Fiction Prize. She also published non-fiction under the pen name Ellen Matthews. Under the pen name E. M. J. Benjamin, she published, with the help of her husband, Takedown (Banks Channel Books, 1999), a young adult novel. Bache's plays include Writer's Bloc, a musical comedy in two acts, which she co-authored with Joyce Cooper and Patricia Ruark.

Bache won several awards in addition to the Willa Cather Prize. She was honored in 1987 by Writers and Readers and, in 1989, by the North Carolina Fiction Syndicate. She also won first place in the Charlotte Writer's Club short story contest in 1987 and was a winner in the 1989 O. Henry Festival Competition.

Papers consist chiefly of author Ellyn Bache's writings, including drafts of novels, short stories, and screenplays; journal and newspaper articles; and a musical play. Clippings are of fiction and non-fiction works, mid 1970s-late 1980s. Much of Bache's writing is set in southern locales and deals with race relations and southern culture in general. Correspondence regarding revision or publication of particular works is filed with those works; there is also some correspondence in the subject files concerning character development and historical research conducted while writing and revising The Activist's Daughter, a novel about student activists and racial unrest at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1963.