Researching Sylvia Wilkinson

She was born in Durham, North Carolina in the United States and graduated from Woman's College, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in 1962. She received her master's degree from Hollins College (now Hollins University) in 1963 and studied at Stanford University under a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship 1965-66.

Wilkinson taught at various institutions including the Universities of North Carolina at Asheville and Chapel Hill, the College of William & Mary, Sweet Briar College, Hollins University, Washington University and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She is a teaching scholar with the National Faculty. She received a number of literary awards including the Sir Walter Raleigh Award twice—in 1968 for A Killing Frost, and again in 1978 for Shadow of the Mountain, a Eugene Saxton Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977, the UNC - Greensboro Alumnae Service Award, and a Mademoiselle Merit Award for Literature. She has published 27 books: 7 novels for adults, 4 adult non fiction works (3 on auto racing, one on education) and 16 juveniles with automotive themes.

She was a Motorsports Correspondent for Autoweek and is currently a World Book Encyclopedia contributor on auto racing. She was an auto racing timer and scorer for many years for numerous drivers including Paul Newman, Al Unser Sr., Bobby Rahal and Keke Rosberg.

In 2012, her account of the 2.5 Trans-Am seasons featuring the Brock Racing team with driver John Morton during 1971 - 1972, "The Stainless Steel Carrot", originally published in 1973 by Houghton Mifflin, was reissued by Brown Fox Books with an update on the participants with all royalties going to animal rescue and wildlife groups. In December 2014, her seventh novel: Big Cactus was published by Owl Canyon Press in Boulder, Colorado. In November of 2018, a non-fiction work on race driver John Paul Jr. and his battle with Huntington's Disease entitled "50/50" was published by High Desert Press with all profits going to Paul Jr.'s research fund at UCLA.