Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne grew up reading, writing, and shooting in East Tennessee, with two brothers and one sister, and a wide assortment of animals who ran away often. After graduating from Amhers…
Heidi Pitlor has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She is the author of the novel, The Birthdays. Her second novel, The Daylight Marriage, is forthcoming in May, 20…
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Colu…
Blind and deaf since infancy, American memoirist and lecturer Helen Adams Keller learned to read, to write, and to speak from her teacher Anne Sullivan, graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, and lectured …
Jen Lancaster is the author of her own memoirs including: as Bitter is the New Black, Bright Lights, Big Ass, Such A Pretty Fat, Pretty in Plaid, My Fair Lazy, and the newest: Jeneration X.
Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing--and selling, for a nickel apiece--stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Gru…
Award-winning author SANDRA DALLAS was dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley, in Vogue Magazine. Sandra’s novels with their themes of loyalty, friendship, and human dignity have been…
Helen Phillips is the author of five books, including, most recently, the novel THE NEED. Her collection SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel THE BEAUTI…
Eric Puchner is the author of the novel Model Home (Scribner, 2010), which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won a California Book Award and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award (2nd place). It…
Nicole Baart is the author of eleven novels, including Everything We Didn’t Say (an October 2021 Book of the Month selection and Amazon Editor's pick) and The Long Way Back. Best known for her “race-t…
Diana R. Chambers was born with a book in one hand and a passport in the other. After studying Asian Art History at university, she worked at a Paris translation agency, then it was off to India to op…
Colleen Oakley is the USA Today bestselling author of Jane and Dan at the End of the World, The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise, The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, You Were There Too and othe…
Paul Harding has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2000) and was a 2000–2001 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA. He has published short stories in Shakep…
J.L. Witterick is the international best-selling author of the novel, My Mother’s Secret, which has been translated into 10 languages. Her books are used in schools around the world to teach courage, …
Sarah Loudin Thomas grew up on a 100-acre farm in French Creek, WV, the seventh generation to live there. Her historical fiction is often set in West Virginia and celebrates the people, the land, and …
Chanel Cleeton is the Cuban American New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of many novels, including Reese's Book Club pick Next Year in Havana. Originally from Florida, Chanel studied in Lo…
I grew up about 30 miles outside of Washington, D.C. in what was then undeveloped country. It was a place of cornfields and tree houses, dammed-up creeks and secret swimming holes. In the summers, my …
Meagan Church is the author of emotionally-charged, empathy-inducing novels, including The Mad Wife, The Last Carolina Girl, and The Girls We Sent Away, a Southern indie bestseller and North Carolina …
Jane L. Rosen is an author and Huffington Post contributor. She lives in New York City and Fire Island with her husband and three daughters. Her first novel Nine Women, One Dress was translated into t…
Donna Everhart is a USA Today bestselling author known for vividly evoking the challenges of the heart and the complex heritage of the American South in her acclaimed novels When the Jessamine Grows, …
Cara Wall is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Stanford University. While at Iowa, Wall taught fiction writing in the undergraduate creative writing department as well as at the Iowa Young …
Kelly Mustian is the USA Today bestselling author of The Girls in the Stilt House and The River Knows Your Name. She is the recipient of the Mississippi Library Association's 2023 Author Award for Fic…
Ciera Horton McElroy (b. 1995) was raised in Orlando, Florida. She holds a BA from Wheaton College and an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Bridge Eight, Iron …
Caroline Cleveland is the founding partner of the law firm Cleveland & Conley, LLC, where she represents private and public employers, including law enforcement. A native South Carolinian, she inevita…
