Visiting Authors

Julia Watts is the author of fourteen novels for both young adults and adults. Her books, set in Appalachia, often depict the lives of LGBTQ people in the Bible Belt. Her young adult novel Needlework was selected as Tennessee’s youth selection for the “Great Reads from Great Places” list for the 2022 National Book Festival of the Library of Congress, and won Honorable Mention for Best YA novel of the year in the Foreword INDIES awards. Her novel Finding H.F. won the Lambda Literary Award in the children/young adult category. Her novel, Quiver, set in rural Tennessee, received a rare “Perfect 10 Rating” from VOYA Magazine, and was selected for the American Library Association’s Rainbow List. Her novel Secret City was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a winner of a Golden Crown Literary Award. In 2020 Watts was given the Tennessee Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award. She lives in Knoxville and just completed her PhD in Literacy Studies from The University of Tennessee. Her new novel is Lovesick Blossoms.

C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Books 2022) was named a 2023 finalist for the Theodore Roethke Memorial Prize. His poems have most recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly Review, West Branch, Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. C.T. writes reviews for Rhino Poetry and Mississippi Books Page, and is a poetry reader for Poetry Northwest.

Maria Kuznetsova is the author of the novels Oksana, Behave! and Something Unbelievable. Her other work can be found in Slate, Guernica, Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, Crazyhorse, Catapult, and Mississippi Review. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, she lives in Auburn, Alabama, where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Auburn University. She is also the Fiction Editor of the Southern Humanities Review and The Bare Life Review, a journal of immigrant and refugee literature.

Nayomi Munaweera is the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors and What Lies Between Us. Her work has been widely anthologized. Island of a Thousand Mirrors, a book about the Sri Lankan civil war, was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize. It won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for the Asian Region. What Lies Between Us explores the ongoing legacies of intergenerational trauma and secrecy. It won the Sri Lankan National Book Award. Munaweera currently teaches at Mills College and at the Ashland University low-residency MFA Program.

Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey was an AWP Award winner. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars, Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, and Wanting Radiance (April 2020, University Press of Kentucky).  An essay collection, Voice Lessons, will be published by Iris Press in late 2019. She has also co-edited Writing into the Forbidden: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia. She teaches in the low residency program at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Acclaimed author of the novels Playing for the Devil's Fire, Sofrito, and short fiction in national literary journals, Phillippe Diederich, will give a talk titled, "From Headlines to Fiction: How Current Events Influence Literature."

Focusing on his novel Playing for the Devil’s Fire (an acclaimed young adult novel set in Mexico), Diederich will discuss the power of fiction and how stories that address social issues can tug at our emotions and lead us to better understand ourselves and others.

Maggie Mitchell
Focus Work: Pretty Is

Dacre Stoker, great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker, co-author of Dracula the Un-Dead (a sequel to Dracula) and co-editor of The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years, will give a presentation - "Stoker on Stoker."

Along with the never-before-published and seldom-seen historic images, Stoker provides a glimpse behind the scenes of Bram Stoker and Dracula.

Bernard Diederich, Author and Journalist
Focus Work: Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene’s Adventures in Haiti and Central America

Tony Grooms, Poet & Novelist

Focus Works: Bombingham (2001), Trouble No More (2006), Ice Poems (1988)

Support/Affiliation: Presented as part of the Southern Literary Festival, co-sponsored with the Georgia Humanities Council

Hosted the launch of Grand Central Review, an online space for fiction, poetry, reviews, columns, and art. The website's editors—Richard Monaco, Scott Thompson, and Leverett Butts—led the on-site and remote roundtable conversation. A book signing followed the roundtable discussion.

Support/Affiliation: UNG College of Arts & Letters

Joe Oestreich, Memoirist and Non-fiction Writer

Focus Work: Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll (2011)

Judson Mitcham, Poet Laureate of Georgia, Novelist

Focus Work: A Little Salvation: Poems Old and New (2007)

Other Works: Somewhere in Ecclesiastes (1991), The Sweet Everlasting (1996), Sabbath Creek (2004)

More Information: Georgia Encyclopedia entry

Christal Presley, Memoirist

Focus Work: Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD (2012)

Quentin Falk, Film Critic, and Non-fiction Writer

Focus Work: The Musical Milkman Murder (2012)

Melissa Fay Greene, Non-fiction Writer and Essayist

Focus Work: No Biking in the House without a Helmet (2011)

Other Works: There Is No Me without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Nation's Children (2006), Last Man Out (2003), The Temple Bombing (1996), Praying for Sheetrock (1991)

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Frank X Walker, Poet

Focus Works: Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate this Ride (2010), Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (2003), Black Box: Poems (2005)

Support/Affiliation: Supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Sonya Huber, Memoirist

Focus Work: Opa Nobody (2008)

Support/Affiliation: With grant funding from the Georgia Humanities Council, which is supported through funds appropriated by the Georgia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Humanities

Silas House, Novelist and Non-fiction writer

Focus Works: Eli the Good (2009), Something's Rising (2009), Clay's Quilt (2001)

Support/Affiliation: In partnership with the Georgia Appalachian Studies Center

Laila Lalami, Novelist

Focus Work: Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005)

Support/Affiliation: Supported by the Hoag Lecture Series

Anne Dismukes Amerson, Non-fiction Writer

Focus Work: Dahlonega's Gold (2008)

Jackie K Cooper, Fiction Writer

Focus Work: The Bookbinder (2006)

Diane Gabaldon, Novelist

Focus Work: Outlander (1992)

Support/Affiliation: In conjunction with the Dahlonega Literary Festival

Brian Corrigan, Novelist

Focus Work: The Poet of Loch Ness (2005)

Margaret Edson, Playwright

Focus Work: Wit (1999)

Terry Kay, Novelist

Focus Works: The Valley of Light (2003), To Dance with the White Dog (1991)

Linda G Niemann, Memoirist

Focus Works: Railroad Voices (1998), Boomer: A Railroad Journey (1992)

Natasha Trethewey, Poet

Focus Works: Belocq's Ophelia (2002), Domestic Work (2000)

John Stone, Poet

Poems by Physician-Poet John Stone

Lorraine Lopez, Fiction Writer

Focus Work: Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (2002)

Janisse Ray, Creative Non-fiction Writer

Focus Work: Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (2000)

Judith Ortiz Cofer, Poet, Essayist, and Fiction Writer

Focus Works: Woman in Front of the Sun (2000), The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women (1993), Silent Dancing (1991)

Lynn Hinton, Novelist

Focus Work: Friendship Cake (2001)

Amy Blackmarr, Memoirist

Focus Works: Above the Fall Line (2003), Going to Ground (1997)

Photo by Jeri Bishop

Michael Bishop, Poet, Novelist, and Short Fiction Writer

Focus Work: Time Pieces (1998)

Lee Abbott, Novelist

Focus Work: Living after Midnight (1991)

Le Ly Hayslip, Novelist

Focus Work: When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989)

Fred Chappell, Author and Poet

Focus Works: More Shapes Than One (1992), I Am One of You Forever (1987)

Jill McCorkle, Novelist

Focus Work: Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories (1998)

Bette Bao Lord, Memoirist

Focus Works: In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (1984), Spring Moon (1982)

N. Scott Momaday, Poet and Novelist

Focus Work: The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969)

Photo by Joseph Sanford

Ernest Gaines

Focus Works: A Lesson Before Dying (1993), A Gathering of Old Men (1983), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971)