 Elizabeth Kostova, 2013 Carolina Mountains Literary Festival Banquet Keynote Speaker, is the author of the international bestseller The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress. Her latest novel is The Swan Thieves.  Price also wrote the Hiwassee series, four works of historical fiction set in his native Western North Carolina. They are Hiwassee;Freedom’s Altar; The Cock’s Spur; and Where the Water-DogsLaughed. Freedom’s Altarearned the 1999 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for historical fiction. Recently he has published four titles, Above the Caprock; Four Sixes to Beat: John Wesley Hardin in El Paso; Vengeance on the Sweetgrass; and Call Down Heaven’s Fire. All are works of historical fiction, the first three set in the Old West, the fourth in the medieval period. Price’s nonfiction book Season of Terror will appear this spring from the University Press of Colorado. It explores the consequences of a murderous rampage by Hispanic religious zealots in Southern Colorado in 1863. He is a native of Haywood County, NC and has been a Washington lobbyist, management consultant, urban planner and journalist. He and his wife Ruth are founders of the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. He is a member of the North Caroliniana Society.  Stephanie Powell Watts, associate professor of English at Lehigh University, was awarded the Ernest J.Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for her debut story collection, We Are Taking Only What We Need. Watts’ work chronicles the lives of young African Americans who come from, or live near, the dark houses out on tangled dirt roads on the fringes of the county. We Are Taking Only What We Need has been frequently honored in the past year. It was one of two finalists for The Hemingway Foundation /PEN Award, as well as a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, the John Gardner Short Story Award, and was on the longlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. It has been listed as one of the best books of 2012 by The New Yorker, The Kansas City Star, and other publications. Stories from the collection have appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology in 2008, Best New Stories from the South anthologies in 2007 and 2009, and two stories were cited as Distinguished Stories in the 2009 and 2011 Best American Short Stories anthologies.
 Abigail DeWitt is the author of two novels, Lili (W.W.Norton) and Dogs (Lorimer Press) as well as short stories which have been published in several literary journals, including The Carolina Quarterly, Salamander and The Journal. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship and a Tyrone Guthrie Residency Fellowship, as well as grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Asheville Arts Alliance, Abigail DeWitt received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She has taught Creative Writing at Harvard Summer School, The Duke Writers Workshop, Appalachian State University and UNC-Asheville and has been the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University. She lives in Burnsville, NC with her husband and daughter.  Keith Flynn is the author of six books, including five collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), The Golden Ratio (Iris Press, 2007), and Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013). Flynn's popular collection of essays, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (2007) was published by Writer's Digest Books. From 1984 to 1999, Flynn was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, "The Crystal Zoo," which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003). He is currently touring with a supporting combo, The Holy Men, whose album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011. Flynn's award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, The Cuirt Journal (Ireland), Takahe (New Zealand), Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Review, Margie, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994. For more information, please visit: www.ashevillepoetryreview.com.
 John Santa is an award winning producer and musician living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He loves music and plays
eighteen instruments. But he never said he played them well. At various points in
his life he thought he was a guitar player, a writer, a cellist, a journalist
and a producer. Then one day he realized he was really just a storyteller and
his life got much, much easier. Among his proudest
achievements are being voted Teacher Of The Year four years in a row at
Piedmont Community College and founding the Marathon Jam for Charity(www.marathonjam.com) which has spread to cities around the country and even
overseas. He finds it delightfully ironic that as a poor struggling
author/musician he has been able to raise substantial sums of money for various
charities, most notably the Fisher House. He believes there is nothing more
powerful than a good idea, but it helps a lot if you and your friends are more
than a little bit crazy. Mr. Santa has won
accolades for his book Bluegrass Is My
Second Language: A Year In The Life Of An Accidental Bluegrass Musician and
several documentary scripts, most notably Collateral
Damage: Drug Abuse In Anesthesiology. He has won many awards for his video
productions and while he revels in telling many different kinds of stories, he
most enjoys the ones that in some way seek to make the world a better place,
thus the preponderance of educational and medical videos in his resume. Mr. Santa is an
accomplished songwriter and composer, having written music for commercials, films
and television. He plays music with the band EIGHTwentythree (named for the
first time the group ever played music together, August 23, 2001) and is the
producer of their well-reviewed CD The
Blessing Of The Strings.
Some say the glass is half full. Some say half empty. John just drinks the water. This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sharon Webb began her writing career at the age 
  K  athe r i ne Scott Crawford was born and raised in the blue hills of the South Carolina Upcountry, the history and setting of which inspired her debut historical novel, Keowee Valley. Winner of a North Carolina Arts Award, she is a former newspaper reporter and outdoor educator, a college English teacher, and an avid hiker. She lives with her family in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she tries to resist the siren call of her passport as she works on her next novel. Visit her website at www.katherinescottcrawford.com for more information, or to connect with her via Facebook, Twitter, and at her blog, The Writing Scott. Bob
Watts is an Assistant Professor in English/Creative Writing at Lehigh
University. His first collection, Past Providence (David Robert Books,
February 2005), won the 2004 Stanzas Prize from David Robert Books, and his
poems have been published in Poetry, The
Paris Review, and reDivider,
among other journals. He was, with his
wife, the fiction writer Stephanie Powell Watts, a founding co-editor of Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts while
a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
  Kane "Novakane" Smego is a National Poetry Slam finalist, Southern Fried Poetry Slam Champion, touring artist, and Artistic Director of 2010 Indy Arts Award-winner Sacrificial Poets, a nationally-competing youth poetry organization based out of the Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. Kane has taught workshops and performed all over the country, featuring at such historic venues as the Nuyorican Poets Café in NYC, the 2010 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, and the birth place of Slam Poetry, Chicago’s Green Mill. In the summer of 2011, Kane helped create and lead the Poetic Portraits of a Revolution (PPR2011) project that traveled to Egypt and Tunisia to collect stories of the popular revolutions, and broadcasted them as poems in an eight-week radio series on the National Public Radio affiliate WUNC. Kane was recently featured on the King Mez debut album, My Everlasting Zeal, alongside such accomplished artists as Lupe Fiasco’s producer, Soundtrakk, and Grammy Award-nominee J. Cole. Kane grew up in the Durham-Chapel Hill area, and graduated with highest distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill class of 2010, where he was awarded the Sterling A. Stoudemire Chancellor’s Award for Excellence. Kane seeks to inspire youth and adults to tell their own stories, and challenges them to transform themselves and their communities through the use of the spoken and written word.
 Susan Ketchin’s diverse experience in writing, teaching, and publishing includes her posts as Editor of The St. Andrews Review, Fiction Editor for Southern Exposure Magazine at the Institute for Southern Studies in
Durham, NC, and Associate and Fiction Editor for DoubleTake Magazine at
the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She has served as
Associate Editor at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and Editor for the Fiction
Series University Press of Mississippi. In 1994, Ketchin established an
editorial consulting service, Renascence Literary Services, which she continues
to operate. Susan has taught Creative
Writing and Religion and Literature of the American South at Duke University,
at North Carolina State University, and elsewhere. She was the Eudora Welty Co-Chair
of Southern Studies at Millsaps College and a Visiting Lecturer at the Duke
Divinity School. She has also taught U.S. and Regional Language and Culture at
Duke University's Summer Institute for International MBA Students at the Fuqua
School of Business. Susan’s publications
include articles, interviews, and reviews, and two books, The Christ-Haunted
Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction (University Press of
Mississippi, 1994) and 25 and Under: Fiction (W.W. Norton, 1997),
co-edited with Neil Giordano. Currently, she is working on a book that explores
the impact and healing power of southern music in her life growing up in the
Christ-haunted south. In addition to
writing and editing, Susan lectures and performs throughout the U.S. on a wide
range of topics, such as "Spiritual Autobiography: How Ancient Pilgrim
Souls Speak to Us Today," "Music & Story-telling, Essentials of
Community" and "God In Southern Story and Song." Susan often
weaves songs into a lecture or presentation--such as "Poor, Wayfaring
Stranger," from the Sacred Harp in a lecture on spiritual
autobiography, or her award-winning original composition, "God Stood
Waiting By the Side of the Road" into a talk about modern metaphors for
timeless themes for "God in Southern Story and Song." Having studied
theology and the arts at Union Theological Seminary, NYC, Susan leads weekend
and day-long workshops on topics ranging from "Writing Fiction &
Memoir--Do the Same Principles Apply?" to "Writing, Editing, and
Publishing in the Digital Age." Susan
is an accomplished musician specializing in traditional American music (folk,
jazz, gospel, and blues). She sings and plays guitar, banjo, and upright bass
and has recorded two award-winning albums with Rounder/Flying Fish Records. She currently teaches nonfiction creative writing at Meredith College in Raleigh.
This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Kathryn Newfont studies the rich temperate forests of the southern Appalachians and the people they have sustained, with a particular emphasis on environmental activism and national forest history. She teaches history and works with the Liston B. Ramsey
Center for Regional Studies at Mars Hill College. Her first book, Blue Ridge Commons:
Environmental Activism and Forest History in Western North Carolina,
came out in February 2012 from University of Georgia Press. She finished drafting the manuscript with
support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Blue
Ridge Commons won the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the
Western North Carolina Historical Association, and the 2012 W.D. Weatherford
Award for Nonfiction from the Appalachian Studies Association and Berea
College. She is currently collaborating
on an edited volume exploring oral history and public lands. Chris Schweizer was born in 1980, grew up in Louisiana and Kentucky, and went to college at  
Elizabeth Hudson is a native of North Carolina who grew up in the small community of Farmer,   Robert Lynn "Bobby" McMillon, a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award recipient, was heir to numerous strands of Appalachian culture. From his father's family in Cocke County, Tennessee, he learned Primitive Baptist hymns and traditional stories and ballads. From his mother's people in Yancy and Mitchell Counties, North Carolina, he heard "booger tales, haint tales," and legends about the murder of a relative named Charlie Silver. In Caldwell County, he went to school with relatives of Tom Dula, learned their family stories, and heard ballads, gospel songs, and Carter family recordings. "The real storytelling," Bobby says, "was so intertwined that a bear tale or a fish tale or a witch tale or a tale of some history that had really happened—a family tale—they were all equally believable." He was always drawn to old songs and stories, but as a teenager he discovered the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore in the Lenoir Public Library and got a glimpse of the historical background and significance of the things he knew. This inspired an enthusiasm for folklore documentation that has made him an invaluable resource to his community. By the age of seventeen, he had begun taping and interviewing family members, neighbors, and friends who knew old songs and stories. Even before that, he had begun to develop his skills as a performer. He and his cousins "would get together in the evenings" and "just tell everything in the world that we had heard." Bobby McMillon has performed throughout the state as a singer and storyteller. He has appeared at events such as the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife, the A. P. Carter Memorial Festival, national storytelling conferences, and the Festival for the Eno. For a decade he served public schools as part of the Artist in the Schools and Visiting Artist programs. Filmmaker Tom Davenport produced a film, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, that features Bobby singing the ballad and telling stories passed down in his family and community about the murder. Because these songs and tales have deep roots in his own family and experience, Bobby has a passion for them and for sharing them. "Eventually, I began to realize," he says "that if I didn't perform the songs I was learning, most of the repertories of the people I learned from would be lost because they didn't have family members of their own to hand them down to." His greatest gift is his rare ability to convey to listeners a feeling for the world from which the stories come. Susan Woodring grew up—for the most part—in Greensboro, North Carolina. She also  Susan lives in the foothills of North Carolina where she homeschools her two children and writes. |
 | |
Major SponsorThis project is supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowments for the Arts. |
Authors |
