Alan Gratz is the author of one of the ALA's 2007 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, Samurai Shortstop (Dial 2006), and a 2008 ALA Quick Pick for Young Adult Readers, Something Rotten (Dial 2007). A sequel, Something Wicked (Dial 2008), makes its paperback debut this month. His latest book is The Brooklyn Nine (Dial 2009), a middle grade novel about family, baseball, and American history. He lives with his wife and daughter in Bakersville, North Carolina. Visit his website.
Ann Pancake grew up in Romney and Summersville, WV. Her first novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been (Counterpoint 2007), features a southern West Virginia family devastated by mountaintop removal mining. Based on interviews and real events, the novel was one of KirkusReview's Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Award, and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award.
Pancake's collection of short stories, Given Ground, won the 2000 Bakeless award, and she has also received a Whiting Award, an NEA Grant, a Pushcart Prize, and creative writing fellowships from the states of Washington, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies like Glimmer Train, Poets andWriters, Narrative, and New Stories from the South. She earned her BA in English at West Virginia University and a PhD. in English Literaturefrom the University of Washington. Currently, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle was born in Cherokee, North Carolina. A 1999 graduate of Smoky Mountain High School, Annette earned her B.A. from Yale University in 2003 with a degree in American Studies and Secondary English. She also earned a M.A. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary. After completing her education, Annette came home to Cherokee to work for the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and as an assistant to Principal Chief Michell Hicks. She currently teaches English at Swain County High School. Annette writes poetry, children’s literature, and fiction. As a student, her poetry was published and most recently, a series of three children’s books written by her and illustrated by Cherokee artists were released through the Principal Chief’s Children’s Book Project. Annette lives with her husband Evan, infant son Ross, and two dogs in Cherokee, NC.
Dr. Betty Jamerson Reed, a native of WNC, is an educator by profession but continues to pursue her life-long interest in writing. She is the author of poems, short stories, essays and non-fiction. Involved in on-going research regarding Latino, African American, and Asian communities of WNC, Betty collects local histories from residents of the region. A member of the Appalachian Studies Association, she wrote The Brevard Rosenwald School: Black Education and Community Building in a Southern Appalachian Town, 1920-1966 (2004, McFarland Publishers), which won a certificate of commendation by the American Association for State and Local History.
Beth Cagle Burt co-editor of Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets and short prose journal moonShine review, has served as a newspaper reporter, college educator, and writing consultant. She has received several poetry awards in national contests including first place for poetry chapbook, The Fearless Tattoo. Featured photographer for two literary journals, Beth’s poems and photographs have appeared in journals in the US, the UK, and Australia including New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Tulane Review, Blue Collar Review, Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal, Palo Alto Review, Maelstrom, Monas Hieroglyphic, and others. Her poetry chapbook is available here.
Bruce Stewart
Colby Martin realized his passion for writing at an early age. By 13, he had completed his first novel and by 18 had five tucked away on a shelf. Now as an emerging Western North Carolina author, Colby has trail blazed to the reading public’s eyes through a series of articles published weekly in the Yancey Common Times Journal about local residents and the triumphs and challenges facing them over the last 100 years. Additionally authoring such works as “The Beautiful Room” and “The Famine,” he has furthermore harnessed his love for writing by carving a career for himself in grant writing and administration.
Dale Mettam is a writer currently living a stone’s throw away from Raleigh, NC. He’s written a novel, a bunch of comic-books, as well as a TV show pilot that’s currently in development out in Hollywood. In addition to a movie script he’s wrestling (for a movie franchise you’ve heard of - but have probably never seen), there are comics in the pipeline from Hard Way Studios, Viper Comics, and Atomic Pop Art. When he’s not writing, reading, attending conventions, being talked into editing scripts, or bouncing around ideas for new projects with people significantly more talented than he is, he writes bios about himself in the third person (and feels slightly strange about it).
Dwayne Biddix is the co-founder, co-creator, and penciler of Hard Way Studios, a comic book studio. Some of his credits include; penciling and co-creation of comic titles Morbid Myths, a title selected by Wizard Magazine as number 39 of the top 40 independent books of 2007, House at the Edge of Nowhere, The Supremacy, and Captor of Torments, as well as co-creator of all other titles from the studio. He is also responsible for various other jobs ranging from writing to editing to coloring.
Eleanora E. Tate is the author of eleven novels for middle-grade readers, including her recent historical fiction novel Celeste's Harlem Renaissance, the 2007 AAUW North Carolina Book Award Winner for Juvenile Literature and a 2008 IRA Teachers' Choice Award winner. Her other North Carolina books are To Be Free and Don’t Split the Pole: Tales of Down-Home Folk Wisdom. Her award-winning, acclaimed South Carolina trilogy consists of The Secret of Gumbo Grove; Thank You, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!, and A Blessing in Disguise. In addition to her fiction, Ms. Tate is the author of the biography African American Musicians, which was a major contributor to the book Black Stars of the Harlem Renaissance. She lives in Knightdale, NC, with the spirit of her beloved late husband Zack E. Hamlett, III. Her website.
Elizabeth Ellison is a watercolorist-papermaker who has a gallery-studio in Bryson City, NC. Ellison's pen-and-ink drawings and watercolor washes long have graced the work of her husband, writer/naturalist George Ellison, and others. Publishing venues include The Asheville Citizen-Times, Blue Ridge Outdoors, Outdoor Traveler, Friends of Wildlife, High Vistas, and Chinquapin. In September of 2006, The History Press (Charleston, SC) published Blue Ridge Nature Journal: Reflections on the Appalachians in Essays and Art by George and Elizabeth Ellison. Her website.
George Ellison who resides in Bryson City, NC, wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. He writes a “Nature Journal” column for the Asheville Citizen-Times and a regional history “Back Then” column for Smoky Mountain News. A selection of his "Back Then" columns published in 2005 by The History Press in Charleston, SC, as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. His website.
Gloria Houston With a Ph. D. in interdisciplinary studies from the University of South Florida, Dr. Houston was faculty and Author-in-Residence there. A Rawlings Scholar for three years, ASU's Belk Distinguished Lecturer, and Distinguished Educator of the IRA, she presents writing and literature workshops internationally. She serves on the international Advisory Board for Computers across the World (CPAW) and is International Writers Week faculty. Her best selling book, THE YEAR OF THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREE (Dial/Puffin) was a Best Book of the Decade by the American Library Association and is presented annually as an opera, a musical, and a ballet. Her website.
Hal McDonald is a Professor of English at Mars Hill College. In January, 2007, he won Court TV’s “Search for the Next Great Crime Writer” contest, and had his winning entry, The Anatomists, published by Harper Collins the following year. Having been primarily a writer of regional fiction and poetry for most of his adult life, The Anatomists is his first foray into detective fiction. He is currently at work on a sequel to The Anatomists titled The Death Hunters. A long-time resident of Western North Carolina, McDonald lives in Asheville with his Wife Nancy, and their children Hillary, Lawson, and Eleanor.
Jim Clark has published Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany, two books of poems Dancing on Canaan's Ruins, and Handiwork, and has edited Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece. His first full-lenght play The Girl with the Faraway Eye, was given a public staged reading at The Portland Actors Conservatory Theatre, Portland, OR. He also has several CDs of poems and Appalachian folk music: Buried Land, The Near Myths, and Words to Burn. His stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. He lives in Wilson, North Carolina, where he is Professor of Southern Literature, Writer-in-Residence at Barton College, and an editor of Crucible. His readings often include music and songs performed on the guitar, banjo, autoharp, and mountain dulcimer. His website.
John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Lives Of Water (2003) and Anticipate the Coming Reservoir (2008), both titles from Carnegie Mellon University Press. With Kazim Ali he has co-edited a book of critical essays on the poetry of Jean Valentine. He served as Personal Assistant to Toni Morrison for nine years and as Poetry Editor of Kestrel for twelve years. He now teaches at East Carolina University. Visit his university webpage.
Joseph Dabney has received national attention for his books Mountain Spirits, More Mountain Spirits, HERK and Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine. Smokehouse won the prestigious James Beard Foundation's top book prize in 1999, “Cookbook of the Year,” considered the “Oscar” of food world literature. Dabney is now working on a “cultural cookbook” that will cover the coastal areas of the Carolinas and Georgia (2010). TIME Magazine described Dabney’s first book, Mountain Spirits as “a splendid and sometimes hilarious history” of the Southern Appalachian moonshine culture. Joe Dabney is a native of South Carolina, a graduate of Berry College and a veteran of the Korean War. He has homes in north Atlanta and at Euharlee in north Georgia where he completed a novel set in the Cherokee Nation in the 1800’s. He is married to Susanne Knight Dabney and they attend Dunwoody Baptist Church.
Judy Goldman ’s two novels are: Early Leaving (called “masterfully written and fast-paced… highly recommended” by Library Journal) and The Slow Way Back (Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award, Mary Ruffin Poole First Fiction Award, finalist for SIBA”s Novel of the Year). She’s published two prize-winning poetry collections. Her honors: Mary Frances Hobson Prize for “distinguished achievement in arts and letters,” Fortner Writer and Community Award for “outstanding generosity to other writers and the larger community,” and the Beverly D. Clark Author Award from Queens University.
Karen Miller
Katey Schultz writes from her home in Bakersville, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in Writers’ Dojo, Cadillac Cicatrix, Perigee, M Review, Southern Arts Journal, Now & Then and more. She edits for Silk Road, Main Street Rag, and Memoir (and). Her art essays appear regularly in national magazines. She is the author of Lost Crossings: A Contemplative Look at Western North Carolina's Historic Swinging Footbridges and edited the fiction anthology, Dots On a Map: A Collection of Small Town Stories. Visit her website for more information.
Kevin Morgan Watson is the founding editor of Press 53, a small, independent literary publishing company in Winston-Salem. As a publisher, he has worked with writers ranging from first-time published authors to winners of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. As a writer, his short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the 2002 TallGrass Writers Guild/Outrider Press anthology Take Two—They’re Small, where his short story “Sunny Side Up” won first prize. Kevin also serves as an advisor for student adaptation of short stories to screenplays with the screenwriting faculty at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking.
Laura Hope-Gill is the Director of Asheville Wordfest, a free poetry festival which Frank X Walker calls “the new shining star in the poetry scene.” Her first collection of poems is a collaboration with photographer John Fletcher, Jr., entitled The Soul Tree: Poems and Photographs of the Southern Appalachians (Grateful Steps Press, 2009). Laura has most recently founded, with Trey Moore, Liz Bradfield, Ravi Shankar and Linda Hogan, The Poetry Action Response Team (PART), an effort to merge poetry and citizen journalism in response to environmental disaster and social injustice. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and is an NC Arts Fellow for her nonfiction writings on deafness. She has recently produced a series of short videos in which she explores creative alchemy as the foundation for the world's religions. They can be viewed on her website.
After several years spent in corporate communications and as an advertising copywriter, Lisa Zerkle
turned her attention to poetry. Her work has appeared Crucible, Pinesong, moonShine review, Main Street Rag and literarymama.com. Her poems have earned awards from Press 53, North Carolina Poetry Society, Charlotte Writer’s Club and Jubilee Literary Arts Festival. In 2008, she served as a community columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Zerkle currently resides in Charlotte, NC with her husband and their three children.
Mark Kneece published his first comic story in Alien Worlds in 1987. His credits include a story arc for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight and a stint as the writer of Tarzan for the syndicated comic strip. He co-authored The Bristol Board Jungle (NBM Publishing) with Bob Pendarvis in 2003. The novel is based on his experience as a sequential art teacher. Kneece also wrote a graphic novel entitled Trailers which was nominated for a YALSA Award. Most recently Kneece adapted 8 episodes of the Twilight Zone television series to graphic novel format for Walker Books. Kneece came to Savannah College of Art and Design in 1993 to teach writing in the sequential art department.
Marlin Barton's short stories have appeared in Shenandoah, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sewanee Review and The American Literary Review. "Jeremiah's Road," a story from his first collection The Dry Well was included in Prize Stories 1994: The O. Henry Awards. Barton was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2006, and received the Andrew Lytle Prize in 1995. Barton's debut novel A Broken Thing was published in 2003. A short story collection, Dancing by the River came out in 2005. Barton lives in Montgomery with his wife Rhonda. He is assistant director of the "Writing Our Stories" project, a program for juvenile offenders.
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Michael Joslin has written about and photographed the mountain region for over 25 years. He has published five books on Southern Appalachia, including Highland Handcrafters, Appalachian Bounty, and Our Living Heritage, as well as hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. He has taught at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina, for 20 years. He is a professor of humanities and communication arts and the Director of the Stephenson Center for Appalachia. He and his wife, Pam, live in the Buladean community of Mitchell County, North Carolina, where he works his draft horses, gardens, and wanders the woods.
Pat Riviere-Seel is the author of two poetry collections, The Serial Killer’s Daughter (Main Street Rag, 2009) and No Turning Back Now (Finishing Line Press, 2004). She is Associate Editor of Asheville Poetry Review and has taught poetry classes for UNCA’s Great Smokies Writing Program. A former political reporter for The Fayetteville Observer, she was editor of Voices, the journal of Rural Southern Voice for Peace based in Celo, NC. A Shelby, NC, native, she lives in Asheville with her husband and two cats. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Visit her website to learn more.
Peggy Poe Stern grew up on small farm in the Appalachians near Jefferson, NC; married young; finished school; made handcrafted folk toys; established her own farm on Grandfather Mountain near Boone; raised six children in a single-wide while growing burley tobacco, Christmas trees, and small fruits; built a house; raised small animals – all – while helping her husband do land surveying. Now, still farming, she enjoys her grand and great-grandchildren while creating novels sprinkled with the flavor of her mountain heritage. Her thirteenth novel, Running Wild (about a girl who lives in a cave and is sequel to Wild Thing) should be available at the Festival.
Richard Allen Taylor co-editor of Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, is the author of Something to Read on the Plane (Main Street Rag 2004). His poems have appeared in Rattle, Iodine Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, South Carolina Review, ken*again, The Powhatan Review, and The Main Street Rag, among others.
Rob Amberg ’s photographs and writing from the rural south have been published and exhibited internationally. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies, Alternate Roots, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include: Sodom Laurel Album, 2002, which received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association; Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers, 2007; The Living Tradition: North Carolina Potters Speak, 2009; and The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress, 2009. Amberg lives in Madison County, North Carolina, with his wife, Leslie Stilwell, their daughter Kate, and an assortment of animals.
Noted Cherokee scholar Robert J. Conley, a prolific author with 80 books to his credit during a career spanning 40 years, is the new Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. An Oklahoma Cherokee, Conley has held teaching and administrative positions at numerous institutions during his career, including Northern Illinois University, Southwest Missouri State University, Eastern Montana College, Bacone College, Morningside College, University of New Mexico and Lenoir-Rhyne College. Conley has won numerous awards for his writing, including the Wordcraft Circle “Wordcrafter of the Year” in 1997, and “Writer of the Year” in 1999 for fiction for his War Women.
Contemporary fiction writer, Rose Senehi, is noted for weaving environmental themes into her romantic thrillers. Her novel, In the Shadows of Chimney Rock is nominated for the 2009 SIBA Book Award by members of the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Alliance as the Best in Southern Literature for the year. Now a resident of Chimney Rock, NC, she moved to Murrells Inlet, SC, from Upstate New York in 1996. Her first novel, Shadows in the Grass was published in 2001, her second, Windfall, in 2002, and her third, Pelican Watch in 2006. She is currently writing her fifth novel, Listen to the Wind, that will come out in 2010. Visit her website.
Seabrook Wilkinson was based in Charleston when he resumed writing poetry in 2004. In September 2007, after visiting for a decade, he became a full-time resident of Key West, which has proved an ideal nursery for verse. He more than doubled opus numbers in less than two years. Now, as Amendment of Life creeps towards publication, he is working to cull two more collections from these Key West poems. He finds some landscapes are better for inhabiting, others for remembering; the Carolina Mountains are excellent for both. His first collection of poetry is entitled A Local Habitation.
Susan Woodring award-winning short story writer and novelist, grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. She also lived in California, Alabama, Illinois, and Indiana as a child. Upon graduating from Western Carolina University, she spent a year teaching in Vologda, Russia before moving to the foothills of North Carolina to teach middle school. Susan is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte. She is the author of the novel, The Traveling Disease and a short story collection, Springtime on Mars (Press 53). Susan currently lives, writes, and home-schools her two children in Drexel, North Carolina. (Her website)
Suzanne Adair is the nom de plume for Suzanne Williams, a native Floridian who currently lives with her family in North Carolina. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Historical Novel Society, and the North Carolina Writers Network. Paper Woman, the first book of her historical mystery/suspense series, received the 2007 Patrick D. Smith Literature Award from the Florida Historical Society. The Blacksmith's Daughter and Camp Follower continue her fictional ventures into the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. Camp Follower is a 2009 nominee for the Daphne du Maurier Award and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. Visit her website and author blog for more info and an event calendar.
Tamara Baxter's collection of fiction, Rock Big and Sing Loud won the Morehead State and Jesse Stuart Foundation's First Author's Award for Fiction. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have been widely published in journals such as Now & Then, Artemis, Appalachian Heritage, Wellspring, and in anthologies such as the 2000 O. Henry Awards Anthology, and The Night Shade Nightstand Reader, edited by Fred Chappell. Baxter has received many awards, including the Harriette Arnow Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, a Leslie Garrett Award in fiction, and theNational Rose Post Award for creative non-fiction for her essay, "Some Living Room." She is an Associate Professor of English at Northeast State Community College where she teaches literature and creative writing, and is an editor for the literary magazine, Echoes & Images.
Tim Silver is professor of history at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. His book Mount Mitchell & the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America (2003) earned him the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment, given by the Southern Environmental Law Center in the book category (2004) and and the Ragan Old North State Award of the North Carlonina Literary and Historical Association for the year's best work of non-fiction (2003) among other awards. His previous publications include A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800.
Vicki Lane is the author of the critically acclaimed Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries from Bantam Dell -- Signs in the Blood, Art's Blood, Old Wounds, and In A Dark Season (Romantic Times nominee for Best Contemporary Suspense 2008 and a 2009 nominee for a Best Paperback Original Anthony), as well as The Day of Small Things, a standalone coming in early 2010. Vicki draws her inspiration from the past and present of rural North Carolina where she and her family have tended a mountainside farm since 1975. Visit her website & blog.
Wayne Winkler is the Director of WETS-FM, East Tennessee State University’s public radio station. A native of Detroit, Winkler received his B.A. in Communications from ETSU in 1988 and received his M.A. in History in 1993. He is president of the Melungeon Historical Society, and the author of Walking Toward the Sunset, The Melungeons of Appalachia (2003, Mercer University Press). Winkler lives in Jonesborough, Tennessee with his wife Andrea and their children Claire and Josef.
Will Leverette has been paddling his entire life. His parents and grandparents were pioneers in whitewater paddling in Western North Carolina. His mother was one of the first people of the modern era to canoe the Nantahala—now a premier paddling and rafting destination—and one of the most famous rapids on the French Broad is named after his grandfather, Frank Bell. He has taught paddling through such institutions as Warren Wilson College, Nantahala Outdoor Center, Outward Bound, and several camps. His book, A History of Whitewater Paddling in Western North Carolina, was put out by The History Press. |
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