Finalist for 2024 Fugere Book Prize for Finely Crafted Novellas
I grew up in western North Carolina hearing tall tales from my grandfather Ward. My own early stories were mostly adventures about our pet cats. My mother died when I was in high school, prompting me to draft a “novel” about a high school girl whose mother is “mom-napped,” and, more importantly, revealing how writing offers both escape and healing. While at Duke University I wrote short stories, despite not being admitted to the short story composition class, and explored journalism as a newspaper columnist. After deciding journalism was too confrontational, I went to law school at Duke and (true story) became a litigator.
My legal writing revolves around trying to convince a judge or the Department of Justice that the securities fraud or antitrust claims against my client are unfounded. Legal writing must cite to evidence in the record or applicable case law. Imagine, then, the freedom—the irresistible allure—of fiction writing.
My first novel, Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press 2017), was mostly written in airports, hotel rooms, and cabs. It won the gold medal for the Southeast region in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, was selected for Deep South Magazine‘s Fall/Winter Reading List, and was a finalist for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, Crooks Corner Book Prize, and Sir Walter Raleigh Award, among others.
My second novel, The Good Luck Stone (Haywire Books 2020), appeared on Summer Reading Lists for Deep South Magazine, Writer’s Bone, The Big Other, and Buzz Feed and won the Grassic Novel Prize and Best Historical Novel post-1900 in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Nominated for the Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes, my work has won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award, Carrie McCray Literary Award, James Still Fiction Prize, and other awards. You can find my short stories and essays in the North Carolina Literary Review, Still: The Journal, Parentheses, Atticus Review, The Thomas Wolfe Review, Raleigh Review, The Petigru Review, Pembroke Magazine, Broad River Review, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. Excerpts from STARRING MARILYN MONROE AS HERSELF appear in failbetter, Uncharted Magazine, and The Sunlight Press.
I’ve also dabbled in literary criticism, including an independent scholar presentation “Nature in Ron Rash’s Burning Bright” at the American Comparative Literature Association and Georgetown University. I’ve been an emcee at the North Carolina Literary Festival and a panelist at the American Society of Journalists and Authors, James River Writers Conference, and other events. As a longtime member of the North Carolina Writers Network, I’m honored to currently serve on its Board of Trustees. In 2022, I was North Carolina’s Piedmont Laureate, leading workshops and serving as an ambassador for the literary arts. In 2023, I was South Carolina’s Pat Conroy Writer-in-Residence, and it was during my time in Beaufort that I embarked on a serious re-write of STARRING MARILYN MONROE AS HERSELF.
The seeds for STARRING MARILYN MONROE AS HERSELF were planted when I read a biography of Marilyn Monroe and wondered what might have happened if she had survived past the night of August 4, 1962. The alternative history novella offers America’s favorite blonde icon a new beginning. Although the overdose scandal leaves Marilyn’s reputation hanging by a thread, she is determined to claw her way back into Hollywood’s elite. But a true comeback may mean a difficult choice: regaining her bombshell status or tackling her life-threatening addictions.
I live in Raleigh with my husband, Geoff, and our son, Davis. Our Westie, Griffin, keeps me company while I write.
