James Applewhite has written numerous books of poetry, including the award-winning Daytime and Starlight and A Diary of Altered Light. He is the recipient of the Ragan-Rubin Award from the North Carolina English Teachers Association, the 1998 Brockman-Campbell Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society and the North Carolina Award in Literature. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award in Poetry. Applewhite was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2008. He teaches creative writing at Duke University.