Sibley was born in
Holley, Florida. She graduated from high school in
Mobile, Alabama, and began her journalistic career writing for the
Mobile Press-Register and the
Pensacola News Journal. Sibley gained fame as an award-winning reporter, editor, and beloved columnist for the
Atlanta Constitution from 1941 to 1999. According to the
New Georgia Encyclopedia, "Sibley was one of the most popular and long-running columnists for the Constitution, and her well-written and poignant essays on Southern culture made her an icon in the South." In addition to her column, she covered Georgia politics along with many high-profile court cases. She also wrote 25 books, both nonfiction and fiction, including mystery novels. She covered the
Georgia General Assembly as a reporter from 1958 to 1978. In 2000, after her death, the press gallery in the
Georgia House of Representatives was named in her honor. She won the first
Townsend Prize for Fiction in 1982 for her book
Children, My Children. After an illness, Sibley died, age 85, at her beach house on
Dog Island, Florida. Sibley's granddaughter, Sibley Fleming, wrote a book about her grandmother, ''Celestine Sibley: A Granddaughter's Reminiscence'' (2000). Celestine Sibley and Sibley Fleming co-edited a collection of Sibley's writings,
The Celestine Sibley Sampler: Writings & Photographs With Tributes to the Beloved Author and Journalist (1997). == Selected works ==