Keynote Authors

Sharyn McCrumb

Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, set in the North Carolina/Tennessee mountains, including the New York Times Best Sellers She Walks These Hills, The Rosewood Casket, The Ballad of Frankie Silver and The Songcatcher. Her novel Ghost Riders, an account of the Civil War in the mountains of western North Carolina, won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature given by the East Tennessee Historical Society and the Audie Award for Best Recorded Book. St. Dale, a modern allegory of The Canterbury Tales in a NASCAR setting, won a 2006 Library of Virginia Award, as well as the AWA Book of the Year Award, and was featured at the National Festival of the Book. McCrumb's most recent novels are The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, a Ballad novel set in Wise, VA in 1935; and Faster Pastor, a comic Southern novel co-authored with NASCAR driver Adam Edwards. McCrumb was named a “Virginia Woman of History” in 2008 for Achievement in Literature. Other honors include: AWA Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award; the Chaffin Award for Southern Literature; the Plattner Award for Short Story; and AWA’s Best Appalachian Novel. A film of The Rosewood Casket is currently in production, directed by British Academy Award nominee Roberto Schaefer. McCrumb lives and writes near Roanoke, Virginia.

Jeannette Walls

After a successful career as a journalist and gossip columnist and after penning a well-received book about the gossip industry, Jeannette Walls wrote her award-winning 2006 memoir The Glass Castle, a book which described Walls’ unconventional and, sometimes, shocking upbringing at the hands of two loving but unstable parents.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Walls traveled with her itinerant parents and three siblings across the western United States until the family moved to her father’s hometown of Welch, West Virginia. Walls, her two sisters, and a brother lived in severe poverty and experienced bouts of homelessness as a result of their parents’ unorthodox world views and refusal to conform to societal standards. At seventeen, Walls followed an older sister to New York City and finished high school there, going on to receive a degree from Barnard College. She found success as a writer for New York magazine and as a gossip columnist for MSNBC, eventually writing the book Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip. However, it wasn’t until The Glass Castle was published that Walls’ New York colleagues became aware of the details of her curious upbringing. That year The Glass Castle received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association's Alex Award and the Books for Better Living Award and has since sold over one million copies.

Her most recent work, Half-Broke Horses: a True-Life Novel, was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the New York Times and is based upon the life of Wall’s grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Jeannette Walls lives in Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.

Featured Authors

Laura Treacy Bentley

Laura Treacy Bentley is a Maryland-born poet and author who has lived most of her life in Huntington, West Virginia. Bentley attended Marshall University and has participated in writing workshops in Dublin and Galway, Ireland. She has studied with Billy Collins, read poetry alongside Ray Bradbury, and her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She has also received a Fellowship Award for Literature from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and her poetry has been featured on the website of A Prairie Home Companion. Bentley has taught at Marshall University and is currently the book editor for WV Living Magazine and writer-in-residence for the Marshall University Writing Project. Her first book of poetry, Lake Effect, was published in 2006 by Bird Dog Publishing. One reviewer observed that “what’s new about Bentley’s poetry is the delicacy with which she balances wit, mystery, and the ordinary.” Bentley has remarked that “Poetry is my first love, but writing fiction is my new love” and after completing a suspense novel set in Ireland, she is now working on historical fiction set in the late 1900’s. Laura Bentley lives with her husband, three children and dog Lucky, and divides her time between West Virginia and Maryland.

Jennifer Bradbury

Jennifer Bradbury grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky.  Apart from a semester spent studying at Cambridge University in England, she attended college in her home state at Western Kentucky University. During this time she worked as a guide and counselor at a boys’ summer camp. After earning her degree, Bradbury continued to work with young people, teaching English to high school students, and in 2005 she took part in a Fulbright Teaching Exchange to India.  It was here that she began work on what would become her debut novel, Shift. The mystery for young adults, which focuses on two friends who set out on a post-graduation bike trip from West Virginia to Washington State, was published in 2008 by Atheneum Books. Bradbury had plenty of real personal experience to mine for her characters’ fictitious cross-country journey. The author has undertaken a few long-distance bike trips of her own, including one from South Carolina to California which she and her husband took to celebrate their honeymoon. Bradbury currently lives with her family in Burlington, Washington.

Devin Brown

Devin Brown is a Lilly Scholar and Professor of English at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky where, in addition to other literature classes, he teaches a course on C. S. Lewis. Devin has published articles on C.S. Lewis in numerous journals and has been invited to write chapters for six books on Lewis. Devin’s own books include Inside Narnia: A Guide to Exploring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Inside Prince Caspian. Devin has presented scholarly papers on Lewis at universities worldwide. He has served as Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Transylvania University, and as the featured author for the Kentucky Reading Project and Kentucky Writing Project. Devin’s novel for young people Not Exactly Normal was published in 2005 and was named a Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Book. He has also has published original poetry in literary journals, among them Connecticut Review, Wind, The Chaffin Review, South Carolina Review, Cold Mountain Review, and the Journal of Kentucky Studies. Devin was born and grew up on Chicago’s south side. He and his wife Sharon live in Lexington, Kentucky with their 15-pound cat, Mr. Fluff

Mark DeFoe

Mark DeFoe is Professor Emeritus of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His ninth chapbook, Ten Scenes with Mocking Bird, was the 2009 Tennessee Chapbook Award winner, sponsored by Poems and Plays. Other recent books include The Green Chair, Mark DeFoe’s Greatest Hits, The Rock and the Pebble and Weekend Update. DeFoe has conducted workshops for writers of all ages and has read his work at colleges, libraries and art centers. His work has appeared in many noted publications including Yale Review, Christian Science Monitor and The Southern Humanities Review to name only a few and in over 20 anthologies such as Wild, Sweet Notes: 50 Year of West Virginia Poetry, Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia, Southern Appalachian Poetry and Coal: A Poetry Anthology. A former Bread Loaf Scholar, DeFoe’s poetry has been recognized by awards from Appalachian Heritage, The Atlanta Review, Tulane Review, Black Warrior Review, Smartish Pace, Nimrod, Chautauqua Literary Review, New Letters, Zone 3, Aethlon and Now and Then. DeFoe lives in Buckhannon, West Virginia, with his wife, a pianist and music teacher.

Arwen Donahue

Arwen Donahue has served as program coordinator in the Department of Oral History at the United States Holocaust Museum and has managed its Post-Holocaust Interview Project. Donahue is the author of This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak. Using excerpts from oral history interviews and documentary portrait photography, Donahue and photographer Rebecca Gayle Howell tell the fascinating stories of nine Holocaust survivors, now Kentuckians, in a unique work of history and contemporary art. The book focuses on the survivors' lives after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps, illuminating their reasons for settling in Kentucky, their initial reactions to American culture, and their reflections on integrating into rural American life. Lawrence N. Powell has said of this work that “The stories and images reproduced in this book are both moving and arresting. We owe Donahue and Howell a great debt for rescuing them before they disappeared down the trapdoor of historical memory.”

Ann H. Gabhart

Ann H. Gabhart has published 19 novels for adults and children since 1978. Her childhood home and farm in central Kentucky has been an inspiration and the backdrop for many of her books and she now lives less than a mile away on another farm. The Scent of Lilacs, her first inspirational novel, was chosen as one of the Top Ten Books in Christian Fiction in 2006 by Booklist. This was followed by Orchard of Hope and Summer of Joy and all three comprise her Hollyhill series. Summer of Joy has been picked as a finalist for ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) Long Contemporary Fiction title of 2009. The Outsider, about a Shaker girl and a frontier doctor in 1812, was a finalist for the Christian Fiction Book of the Year for 2009. Her latest novel, The Believer, is her second Shaker novel using the historical background of the Shaker village near her home and received praise from Publisher’s Weekly. Both books have appeared on the CBA and ECBA Bestseller lists. Her next Shaker novel, The Seeker, is scheduled for publication in August 2010. Gabhart is also a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers.

Dwight Harshbarger

Dwight Harshbarger is perhaps best known for his work in psychology, including a seven-year tenure as the Executive Director of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. His first fiction work, In the Heart in the Hills: A Novel in Stories, earned positive review. His most recent novel, Witness at Hawks Nest, a work of historical fiction, describes the human tragedy that unfolded in the digging of the giant Hawks Nest tunnel in southern WV during the 1930s; America’s largest, and perhaps least known, industrial tragedy. Harshbarger is a native of Milton, WV and attended West Virginia University. He later attended Harvard University in post-graduate study before returning to West Virginia to join the faculty of West Virginia University, eventually becoming a tenured professor of psychology. He later served as a corporate consultant and an executive at Sealy, Inc., and Reebok International. Currently he serves as an Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at WVU, and as a Senior Fellow of the Cambridge Center. He is among the West Virginia authors honored by the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Library at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Harshbarger said he is making a transition from a psychologist who is also a writer, to a writer who is also a psychologist.

Craig Johnson

Craig Johnson has received both critical and popular praise for his novels The Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Another Man’s Moccasins and The Dark Horse. All five novels have been made selections by the Independent Booksellers Association, and The Cold Dish was a DILYS Award Finalist and was translated into French in 2009 as Little Bird and was just named one of the top ten mysteries of the year by Lire magazine. Death Without Company was selected by Booklist as one of the top-ten mysteries of 2006, won the Wyoming Historical Society’s fiction book of the year. The short story, Old Indian Trick, won the Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Award and appeared in Cowboys & Indians Magazine. Kindness Goes Unpunished, the third in the Walt Longmire series, was number 38 on the American Bookseller’s Association’s hardcover best seller list. Another Man’s Moccasins, was the recipient of Western Writer’s of America’s Spur Award as Novel of the Year and the Mountains and Plains Book of the Year. The Dark Horse, the fifth in the series has garnered starred reviews by all four prepublication review services. Craig is also Director at Large for Mystery Writers of America. Craig lives with his wife Judy on their ranch in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25.

Jean Edward Smith

Jean Edward Smith is the first John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University and a John Deaver Drinko Academy Distinguished Fellow. He is the author of twelve books, including most recently, FDR, a full-length biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt which won the 2008 Francis Parkinson Prize of the Society of American Historians for the “best book on an American theme published the previous year” and was on the New York Times best-seller list. In addition to FDR, Smith has written Grant, a biography of Ulysses S. Grant that was a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, an American Library Association Notable Book and a Publisher’s Weekly Book of the Year; a work on John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, entitled John Marshall: definer of a Nation; and a biography of General Lucius D. Clay. He is presently at work on a biography of Dwight David Eisenhower which will be published by Random House in 2011.

M. Glenn Taylor

M. Glenn Taylor was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia. The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart is his first novel. It was a Fall 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and it was also a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart is an epic novel about the oldest living man in West Virginia and the often unbelievable events of his life. His next novel will be titled The Marrowbone Marble Company and will tell the story of a glass factory worker from Huntington, West Virginia who enlists in the Marines shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Taylor teaches English and fiction writing at Harper College in suburban Chicago, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Matthew C. Wolfe

Matthew C. Wolfe of Huntington has been a full-time college teacher at Ohio University, Marshall University and West Virginia University. He has a Bachelor’s degree in music performance and a Master’s degree in music history from Marshall University, and a doctorate in medieval literature and books from West Virginia University. His published work includes selected poems in “Wild Sweet Notes, Vol. 2”; a mystical short story, “7:58,” in Fantastical Visions; and “Placing Chaucer’s Retraction for a Reception of Closure” in The Chaucer Review. In 2000, Wolfe wrote a full-length science fiction novel, HeartBeat. He also participated in and led talks for the Cabell County Public Library’s Jewish Literature Series in 2008 and 2009.