Rick Bragg is best known for his books All Over but the Shoutin’, Ava’s Man and The Prince of Frogtown, a series of stories about his family and growing up in the Deep South.  The Wall Street Journal calls Bragg’s latest book The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table “a tribute, a monument, to his mother and her people, captured … in solid recipes for good food.”  Formerly a journalist, Bragg worked for The Anniston Star, The Birmingham News and The St. Petersburg Times.  However, it was his work at The New York Times that won him the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his elegantly written stories about contemporary America.  Bragg is also a regular contributor to Garden & Gun magazine.  He lives in Alabama with his wife, Diane.

Growing up in Philadelphia as the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, Patti Callahan Henry learned early the value of storytelling, a lesson which has served her well as The New York Times best-selling author of 13 novels. Her contemporary Southern fiction novels centering on women navigating family life and romantic relationships have won her much praise over the years. She has been a finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction, an Indie Next Pick, an OKRA pick and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Novel of the Year. Her newest novel, Becoming Mrs. Lewis, is her first foray into historical fiction, telling the story of the friendship and love between Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, which Library Journal called “a magical and literary experience that won't be soon forgotten.” Patti currently resides in Birmingham, Alabama.

A native of Charlotte, South Carolina, David Joy moved to the mountains of North Carolina when he was 18 and his novels tell the stories of the men and women whose lives are tied to this land and its history. He is the author of the Edgar finalist novel Where All Light Tends to Go, as well as the novels The Weight of This World and The Line That Held Us. His stories and essays have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, Garden & Gun and The Bitter Southerner and have been nominated for awards such as the Pushcart Prize. Author Wiley Cash says “No one writes about the issues facing rural America as clearly, as fairly or as well as David Joy.”