Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Emily Carpenter is a graduate of Auburn University with a BA in Communications and two minors in Journalism and Theater. Emily moved to New York with her husband and began work at CBS overseeing the production of soap operas such as Guiding Light and As the World Turns. Upon moving to Atlanta, she wrote and shopped a few screenplays to Hollywood agents and production companies, but had little success even though she was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. She then joined the Atlanta Writers Club where she had several tries at the rom-com genre before switching to Southern Gothic with Burying the Honeysuckle Girls. She has since written four more novels, the latest of which, Until the Day I Die, Publisher’s Weekly says “keeps the suspense high all the way to the shocking conclusion.”

Born and raised in a small town in West Tennessee, Sally Kilpatrick writes to go home. She lives with her husband, a Georgia boy, and her two kids in Marietta, Georgia, but her heart has never left Tennessee. Her books reflect the small-town shenanigans and memorable characters she grew up around. Her latest novel, Oh My Stars, was described by RT Book Reviews as written in a way that "makes readers feel as if they are hanging out with their best friend." With five novels under her belt, Sally has been a Golden Heart® Finalist and has won multiple awards, including the 2018 and 2019 Georgia Author of the Year, the Maggie Award of Excellence, the Booksellers’ Best and the 2016 Nancy Knight Award for Mentorship.

Hampton Sides is best known for his gripping nonfiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of discovery and exploration. He is the author of the best-selling histories Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and most recently, On Desperate Ground, a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by marines called on to do the impossible during the greatest battle of the Korean War. Sides is editor-at-large for Outside Magazine and a frequent contributor to National Geographic and other magazines. His journalistic work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has twice been nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. A native of Memphis and a Yale graduate, Hampton is the 2015 Miller Distinguished Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute and an advisory board member of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference and the Author’s Guild. He is also a partner of Atalaya Productions, an independent film company that develops nonfiction and historical stories for the screen. A frequent lecturer, Hampton divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Colorado College, where he teaches narrative nonfiction and serves as Journalist in Residence.

Snowden Wright lived in New York City for nine years, but moved back to Mississippi where he was born and raised to write his latest novel American Pop. This epic novel takes place from the 1870s to the 1980s and explores history through the story of a family whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of a nation. Chosen as an Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and for the “Discover Great New Writers” program by Barnes & Noble, American Pop is ultimately an American novel that is set in the South. Snowden is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University and has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire and the New York Daily News, as well as other publications. He was also awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the 2018 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.