Writer's wife leaves him for Ted Turner

ATLANTA, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler reportedly e-mailed his university colleagues that his wife dumped him for Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner.

Olen, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer for "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain," blames the attention the accolade brought him for his wife, writer Elizabeth Dewberry, deciding to leave, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.

"Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it. Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner," he wrote in his electronic message to colleagues at Florida State University. "Elizabeth has never been able to step out of the shadow of the Pulitzer."

Olen, 62, and Dewberry, 44, were married for 12 years. They met at a booksellers convention in Atlanta.

In his note, Olen also chatted about Turner's roving eye.

"She will not be Ted's only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous," he wrote. "But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and gives them his absolute support when he does."