Peggy Payne

Peggy Payne writes novels that focus on the intersection of sex and spirituality. Her most recent, Cobalt Blue (2013) has been published in 5 countries and won a 2014 IPPY for Visionary Fiction. It is probably the only novel to be both a book of the month on a Playboy Radio Network program and in the top 100 spiritual books for Kindle.

She was awarded the Sherwood Anderson Award for 2003, given in memory of Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. She has been the recipient of an NEH grant to study fiction at Berkeley, an Indo-American Fellowship to research Sister India (one of her books) in Varanasi and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship.

Her novel, Sister India, was published in 2002. It tells the story of a morbidly obese American woman living in India who is hiding from the life she tried to escape in North Carolina. The book is the story of her courageous emergence.

Sister India was on The New York Times list of notable books of 2001.

Doncaster: A Legacy of Personal Style was Payne's third book and was published in 1997. It depicts a women's clothing company that is built on helping every person, be it employee or customer, develop their individual style and meet their personal goals.

The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others was Payne's second book, written with Allan Luks and published in 1991. In it she argues, based on scientific evidence, that helping others mitigates both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain, reduces chronic hostility, and decreases the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks. She and Luks also make famous the term "helper's high," which describes a feeling of exhilaration and a burst of energy similar to that experienced after intense exercise, followed by a period of calmness and serenity.

Published in 1988, Revelation is the story of calm and collected minister, Swain Hammond, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One day while grilling food in his backyard he hears God speaking to him. Neither he nor most of his congregation believe in a god who does such a thing, however. Hammond therefore faces the difficult decision of whether to risk his livelihood by going public about the ordeal or keep secret the very thing his career is supposedly devoted to teaching.

Peggy Payne (born 1949) is a writer, journalist and consultant to writers. She has written four books and her articles, reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, among others. Her work deals primarily with religion and spirituality.

Payne was born in 1949 in Wilmington, North Carolina. She graduated from Duke University in 1970 and worked for The Raleigh Times for two years before beginning her freelance career, which lasted over three decades.