Meet the Authors
LINDA-MARIE BARRETT
Linda-Marie Barrett is a writer, editor, and executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA). Before that, she was at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe, where she wore many hats, including general manager and co-owner. She is the author of Creating a Salon: The Magic of Conversations That Matter (Agate Publishing, 2025) which Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, praises as “a generous, intelligent, and deeply loving guide to building spaces where real people can gather for real conversation about real topics.” She edited and contributed to Malaprop’s bestselling serial novel Naked Came the Leaf Peeper and is also a contributor to Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, and the Creative Life, an anthology benefitting the recovery of Asheville, NC after Hurricane Helene.
https://www.lindamariebarrett.com/
MEAGAN CHURCH
Meagan Church is the New York Timesand USA Today bestselling author of The Mad Wife, The Girls We Sent Away, and The Last Carolina Girl. She writes emotionally-charged, thought-provoking, empathy-inducing stories that explore the complexity of human nature. Her historical fiction chronicles the plight and fight of unheard voices of the past. Meagan holds a B.A. in English from Indiana University and is an adjunct for Drexel University’s MFA in creative writing program. A Midwesterner by birth, she now lives in North Carolina with her high school sweetheart, three children, and a plethora of pets.
JAMES DODSON
James (Jim) Dodson is an award-winning journalist, editor, and author. He serves as Editor of PineStraw Magazine and Founding Editor of O.Henry Magazine and Salt Magazine. A Distinguished Alumnus of East Carolina University, Dodson has enjoyed a journalism career spanning more than four decades, earning numerous honors including the William Allen White Award for Public Affairs Journalism, the Donald Ross Award, and North Carolina’s Order of the Longleaf Pine.
His work has appeared in more than 50 publications worldwide, and he is the author of several bestselling books, including Final Rounds, Faithful Travelers, The Road to Somewhere, A Golfer’s Life (with Arnold Palmer), Ben Hogan: An American Life, and American Triumvirate, which was named one of The New York Times‘ Top 100 Books of 2012. His most recent book is The Range Bucket List, published by Simon & Schuster.
https://www.jamesdodsonauthor.com
GEORGANN EUBANKS
Georgann Eubanks is the author of six books from the University of North Carolina Press with a seventh on the way. The new book, which she will preview in her presentation, contains the colorful stories of more than three dozen women naturalists who studied the flora and fauna of the US South, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their experiences across ten states of the region provide a fresh perspective on the ecosystems where they lived and worked. When many women were not driving at all, they drove cars on muddy backroads and hiked many miles, often alone in pursuit of rare birds or plants. They developed their marksmanship skills and dressed the part of hunters. Many pursued teaching jobs to support their collecting habits and gave over their whole summers and weekends to field work.
DONNA EVERHART – Please note Donna will be joining us on August 28th for a reading to kick off the festival season!
Donna Everhart is the USA Today bestselling author of authentic, vivid Southern fiction, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet, Indie Next Pick and Amazon Book of the Month, The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Forgiving Kind, The Moonshiner’s Daughter, and The Saints of Swallow Hill.
Her sixth novel, When the Jessamine Grows, an Amazon Top Ten Book of the Month, releases January 23, 2024.
Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, she now lives with her husband in the small town of Dunn, North Carolina where she is currently working on her next novel. She’s a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, Historical Novel Society, and is the spokesperson for the MaryJanesFarm Book Club.
SCOTT GOULD
Scott Gould is the author of six books, including Peace Like a River, The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. His other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Garden & Gun, and New Stories from the South, among others. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina.
https://www.scottgouldwriter.com
TERRY HARMON
Terry Harmon is a historian, genealogist, and author from Watauga County, North Carolina. A lifelong resident of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he has spent decades researching Appalachian families, local history, and regional culture. His published works include Cold in Carolina, CONVOLUTED, and Watauga County Revisted.
A graduate of Appalachian State University, Harmon holds degrees in Political Science and Education and has devoted much of his writing career to preserving the history and heritage of the Southern Appalachian region. In addition to his historical and genealogical research, he has written numerous reflections on faith, Scripture, and the Christian life. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to documenting the people, stories, and traditions of the North Carolina mountains.
TOMMY HAYS
Tommy Hays’ new novel, published in March of this year, is The Marriage Bed (Blair). His novel The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press) was a Finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Fiction Award, and was chosen for numerous community reads and read on NPR’s “Radio Reader”. His other adult novels are Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum) and In the Family Way (Random House), winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Tommy’s middle grade novel, What I Came to Tell You (Egmont USA), was chosen as a SIBA Okra Pick. He’s published stories and various pieces in magazines and literary journals such as Redbook, Our State, Smoky Mountain Living, The Chattahoochee Review and storySouth.
He was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors and named to the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina. He’s a member of National Book Critics Circle. He is retired Founding Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and Lecturer Emeritus in the Master of Liberal Arts program at UNC Asheville. He received his BA in English from Furman University and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
JEREMY JONES
Jeremy B Jones is the author of the nonfiction book Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries (Blair, 2025) as well as the memoir Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland (Blair, 2014). His essays have been published in Oxford American, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, and Brevity, among others. He also writes frequently for Our State Magazine. Jeremy earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and is a professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where he also directs the annual Spring Literary Festival.
NELL JOSLIN
Nell Joslin is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, the mother of three and the grandmother of five. Over the span of five decades, she has been a public-school teacher, medical librarian, freelance journalist, and attorney, and about 20 years ago she became serious about writing fiction. Although she has published short stories and memoir pieces in various literary magazines, Measure of Devotion is her first novel. She hopes it is not her last.
MAURICE MANNING
Maurice Manning’s forthcoming ninth book is American Poetry. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Manning is the co-creator and host of The Grinnin’ Possum Podcast, focused on tall-tale poems, old-time music, geography, and local history. He is a professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Transylvania University and lives on a small farm in Kentucky. Most recently he has collaborated with musician, Brendan Taaffe, on The Bucolics Project that sets a number of his poems to traditional Appalachian tunes.
TERRY ROBERTS
Terry Roberts is the author of seven celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (Finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black (Finalist for the 2022 Best Paperback Original Novel by the International Thriller Writers Organization); and most recently, The Sky Club (Finalist for the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award), The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, and In the Fullness of Time (Shortlisted for Book of the Year by the Southern Literary Review).
Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina—born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain story telling.
Roberts is the Director Emeritus of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.
https://terryrobertsauthor.com
ANNIE WOODFORD
Annie Woodford is the author of Peasant (Pulley Press, 2025), Where You Come from Is Gone (Mercer University Press, 2022), recipient of the 2022 Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry, and Bootleg (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2019). Her micro-chapbook, When God Was a Child, was published by Bull City Press in 2023. Most recently, she was part of the poetry anthology Had I a Dove: Appalachian Poets on the Helene Flood, proceeds from which go to support Hurricane Helene relief efforts. She has been the recipient of the Jean Ritchie Fellowship, the Thelma Smallwood Scholarship at the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop, and the Guy Owen Prize by Southern Poetry Review.