Faculty

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  Clint Bowman

  Clint Bowman is a writer from Black Mountain, NC, where he works full time as an Outdoor Recreation Coordinator. He is the cofounder and facilitator of the Dark City Poets Society—a free community poetry group based out of the Black Mountain Library. Clint’s debut full-length collection of poetry, If Lost, was published in 2024 by Loblolly Press. More of Clint’s work has appeared in Poetry South, Louisiana Literature, The Indianapolis Review, O. Henry Magazine, Long River Review, and One Art, among others.

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  Justin Brouckaert

  Justin Brouckaert is a literary agent at Aevitas Creative Management, where he represents literary novelists and nonfiction writers of all stripes. He’s represented such New York Times bestselling titles as Julian Sancton’s Madhouse at the End of the Earth, Marisa Franco’s Platonic, and Amber Share’s Subpar Parks, as well as award winners/finalists such as Char Adams’ Black Owned (LA Times Book Prize), Lauren Aguirre’s The Memory Thief (PEN / E.O. Wilson Award), R.S. Deeren’s Enough to Lose (Michigan Notable Book Award) and Jesselyn Cook’s The Quiet Damage (J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award), among many others. He earned his MFA in Fiction at the University of South Carolina and now lives with his wife and daughter in Metro Detroit.

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  Nic Brown

  Nic Brown is a writer and a musician. His books include Violent Femmes’ Violent Femmes (33 1/3, Bloomsbury 2026), the memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint 2023), which was named a book of the year by Library Journal and Booklist, and the novels In Every Way (Counterpoint 2015), Doubles (Counterpoint 2010), and Floodmarkers (Counterpoint 2009), which was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, and the Harvard Review, among many other outlets. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Columbia University, Nic has served as the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi and is now a professor at Clemson University. He is also a drummer. With his first band, Athenaeum, he released two records on Atlantic Records. The first single off their first album peaked at #14 on the Billboard Alternative Rock charts. He has since recorded and toured with many acts, including Longwave, Ben Lee, and Kim Richey.

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  Thomas Calder

  Thomas Calder is the author of The Wind Under the Door and the forthcoming novel, The Crave (Regal House Publishing, April 2028). His unpublished short story collection, You & Me, was a finalist for the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. His work has appeared in Juked, Tampa Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch, and elsewhere. His short fiction was a semifinalist for the 2025 Doris Betts Fiction Prize and his forthcoming novel, The Crave, was a finalist for the 2025 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. Along with writing fiction, he is the managing editor of Mountain Xpress, an alt-weekly in Asheville, and the co-host of DRAFT: Artistry in Conversation with fellow author Tessa Fontaine. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and daughter. 

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  Catherine Campbell

  Catherine Campbell is the owner of One For The Books, a PR & marketing agency for brands in food, beverage, hospitality and culture. A 2x agency founder with 20 years of experience, Catherine was the head of marketing for Wildsam, East Fork, and Biblio.com, and has helped several authors bring their books to market. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from UNC Asheville, a MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University, is a former board member of The Rumpus, and is a former professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University. www.catherinejcampbell.com

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  Lydia Caudill

  Lydia Caudill is an agent with Andrea Hurst Literary Management. She started as an editorial intern in 2022 and quickly transitioned into the role of literary scout and editorial assistant. Now sporting the agent hat, Lydia is excited to build a diverse client list of her own and partner with authors to craft and share meaningful stories that leave a lasting impact on readers. Originally from a small town in Eastern Kentucky, Lydia developed a passion for literature early on, seeking any opportunity to read and always keeping a book on her “just in case” there were any free moments. She is a graduate of NC State University, where she earned her B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. When she’s not editing or reviewing submissions, you can find her supporting live music, stamping her national parks passport, or spending time with her much-beloved dog, Rocky.

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  Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

  Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a graduate of Yale University and the College of William & Mary, is the author of Even As We Breathe, the first novel published by an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The novel was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, and won the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Clapsaddle’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Salvation South, Bon Appétit, and Travel + Leisure, as well as in anthologies including What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People, Troublesome Rising: A Thousand Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky, and The Devil’s Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina. In partnership with the Museum of the Cherokee People, Clapsaddle founded Confluence: An Indigenous Writers’ Workshop Series, which brings Indigenous authors to the Qualla Boundary to mentor emerging writers. She serves on the Museum’s Board of Directors and is an editor for the University Press of Kentucky’s Appalachian Futures series.

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  Erin Hallagan Clare

  Erin Hallagan Clare is the founder of Story Parlor, a narrative arts listening room and experiential learning space in Asheville, NC, and co-owner of Battery Park Book Exchange & Champagne Bar. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Creativity at Rowan University, where her dissertation focuses on the ontology of story and the creative process. With a master’s in Creative Psychology and certifications in creativity coaching, applied mythology, narrative psychology of fairy tales, and the Enneagram, Erin’s work explores the intersection of creativity, meaning-making, and story. She is a writer, storyteller, Moth StorySLAM champion, and Emmy-winning producer. She teaches regularly at Story Parlor and UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program, and leads a bi-annual Creative Facilitator Training Program. Her writing appears in The Cleveland Review, Psychology Today, Thrive Global, and others, and she is a contributing author to The Coach’s Guide to Completing Creative Work (Routledge). Erin has developed the “Inward & Artward” model of creativity and founded an online learning platform based on this methodology, which includes the forthcoming StoryBound publishing imprint in partnership with Wet Cement Press.

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  Keith Flynn

  Keith Flynn is the award-winning author of eight books, including six collections of poetry. His 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, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer’s Chronicle. The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.

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  Tessa Fontaine

  Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts (FSG 2018), a New York Times Editors’ Choice; Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and best book of the year by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors’, and The New York Post.  The Red Grove (FSG 2024), her debut novel, was named a best book by Amazon Editors’ and People Magazine and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Other writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, People, and more. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa has taught in jails and prisons, community centers, and currently teaches in Warren Wilson’s MFA program. She lives in Asheville with her daughter, goofy dog and sassy cat.

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  Luke Hankins

  Luke Hankins is the author of several poetry collections, including MAGNITUDE: New & Selected Short Poems (forthcoming, Texas Review Press). He is also the author of a collection of essays, The Work of Creation, and a volume of translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow. The editor or co-editor of a number of anthologies, most recently Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings (with Nomi Stone), Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.

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  Tommy Hays

  Tommy Hays’s latest novel is The Marriage Bed, set in Asheville and published by Blair. His other novels are The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press), In the Family Way (Random House), Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum), and What I Came to Tell You (Egmont USA). He has been inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors as well as the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina. He’s Founding Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville. For more information see www.tommyhays.com.

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  Raye Hendrix

  Raye Hendrix is a writer from Alabama. Their debut poetry collection, What Good Is Heaven, was published by Texas Review Press to represent Alabama in their Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series and is the winner of the 2024 Weatherford Award for Best Poetry About Appalachia. Raye is also the author of two chapbooks, Every Journal is a Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press) and Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press), and the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature. They are a member of the Thunder and Lightning Poetry Collective, a community dedicated to highlighting BIPOC and/or queer disabled poets. Raye lives in the Deep South and hopes to be buried there too (but not for a good long while).

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  Laura Hope-Gill

  Laura Hope-Gill’s forthcoming book, Bee Bread: How the Hive of Story Listening and Storytelling Heals the World (Jacar/Sable 2026) is the culmination of thirty years of exploration at the nexus of writing, healing, medicine, and culture. Her curiosity has led her to Australia where she learned Performance Poetry from The Collective Effort Poets of Fitzroy, and to China to trace her grandmother’s experience in a Japanese prison camp, to the Pacific Northwest where at 28 she ventured into deep wilderness of soul and nature, returning every summer to her beloved homeworld of Georgian Bay, Canada. Her path led her to found and direct the multicultural-at-the-mic poetry festival, Asheville Wordfest, to become the poet laureate of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and to launch both the MFA and Narrative Healthcare Certificate Programs at Lenoir-Rhyne University, and to serve as Folklife Apprentice to world-renowned Storyteller, Connie Regan-Blake. Her poems, essays, and stories appear in Parabola, North Carolina Literary Review, and more. She is a North Carolina Arts Fellow and twice recognized architectural historian by the North Carolina Society of Historians. Her current focus is developing a weekend retreat for doctors seeking deeper story wisdom in narrative practice with Connie Regan-Blake and Mountain Area Health Education Center. She lives in Asheville with four Labradors. 

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  Van Jensen

  Van Jensen is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, and author of comic books and graphic novels. He has written some of the biggest characters in the world, including Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Godzilla, and James Bond. Jensen is at work on the Godfall novel trilogy for Grand Central. The first book in the series has received multiple awards and was the subject of a major bidding war for the media rights. Previously, he wrote extensively for DC Comics and created several original graphic novels. Jensen is the writer and executive producer of a horror-action TV project currently in development at Sony. He is also the executive producer of the Godfall TV project in development with Ron Howard attached to direct. 

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  Denise Kiernan

  Denise Kiernan is an author, journalist, producer, and host of “CRAFT: Authors in Conversation.” Her forthcoming narrative nonfiction title, Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution arrives June 23, 2026. Her latest young reader’s book, We Gather Together: Stories of Thanksgiving from then to now, is a companion title to the popular adult nonfiction book, We Gather Together, and children’s picture book, Giving Thanks. Her book The Last Castle was an instant New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback and was also a Wall Street Journal bestseller. She is also the author of The Girls of Atomic City, which is a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and NPR bestseller and has been published in multiple languages. She lives in North Carolina.

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  Mackenzie Kozak

  Mackenzie Kozak is the author of no swaddle (University of Iowa Press, 2025), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Missouri Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Mackenzie serves as an associate editor at Orison Books and works as a grief therapist in Asheville. 

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  F.T. Lukens

  F.T. Lukens is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of young adult speculative fiction including The Last Best Quest Ever which received starred reviews from Booklist & School Library Journal, as well as the novels Spell Bound (2024 ALA Rainbow Booklist), So This Is Ever After (2023 ALA Rainbow Booklist; 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards nominee), In Deeper Waters (2022 ALA Rainbow Booklist; Junior Library Guild Selection), and the forthcoming Chaos Ensues. F.T. resides in North Carolina with their spouse, three kids, three dogs, and three cats.

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  Andrew Mack

  Andrew Mack is the Founder and Managing Editor of Loblolly Press, an independent publisher based in Asheville, NC, publishing contemporary poetry and prose rooted in the American South. He oversees editorial direction, acquisitions, and author partnerships across the catalog, and is the author of three poetry collections: Weekend Revival, What the River Was, and Beasts of Chase.

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  Alice Martin

  Alice Martin is a fiction writer, born and raised in North Carolina, and the author of Westward Women (St. Martin’s Press 2026), a novel told in four different perspectives. Her creative work has appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Appalachian Heritage, and Lit Hub, amongst others. She received her PhD in American literature from Rutgers University and is now an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University. Before returning to academia, she worked for years in commercial book publishing at Algonquin Books, Writers House LLC, and elsewhere. Now, she lives in Waynesville with her husband, son, attention-seeking cat, and too many typewriters.

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  Kate McKean

  Kate McKean is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MA in fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Catapult, and her first book, Write Through It: An Insider’s Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life is available from Simon Element. In 2026, Sourcebooks published her picture book Pay Attention to Me. She writes the Agents & Books newsletter at agentsandbooks.com. You can find her at all the places online as well as katemckean.com.

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  NitaJade

  NitaJade, an Affrilachian Poet and self-proclaimed weirdo, hails from Asheville. They earned their B.A. from Berea College (2019) and their MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry from the University of Kentucky (2022). They insist that their late O.G. Queen’s sweet potato pie epitomizes love, and they aspire to embody the aesthetics of sloths and narwhals (slarwhals, if you please). They laugh loudly and stubbornly. NitaJade’s debut poetry collection, Mob the Sky, is expected to release in 2027. NitaJade’s poetry and other writings have appeared in Callaloo, Poetry Northwest, Inverted Syntax, Zora’s Den, Torch Literary Arts, Still: the Journal, Carolina Muse, Lucky Jefferson, Rabbit Catastrophe, KRCC Voices, The Griot: Journal of African American Studies, and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers. Their poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net Award by Torch Literary Arts and Still: the Journal. Several poems by NitaJade can be found in the following forthcoming journals and anthologies: Sheila-Na-Gig: AMPLIFY, the Arts Equity Collective: SOS Empowerment Arts & Healing, Backwoods Literary Press: Testament – A Rural Anthology, and Belonging to Place.

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  Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

  Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is the writer of Sleepovers (Hub City Press, 2020). Sleepovers was selected by Lauren Groff as the winner of the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize.  Called “elegant and mesmerizing” and “brimming with dark and romantic details, the sorts of things that only a vigilant witness would note” by Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker, Sleepovers, was featured in Poets & Writers and Publishers Weekly. It also won the Towson Prize for Literature and was published in Italian as Pigiama Party (Bompiani, 2023). Ashleigh’s short stories appear in the Paris Review, Oxford American, Narrative, Southwest Review, the Baffler and elsewhere. Ashleigh’s from Woodland, North Carolina. She earned her MFA from UNC Wilmington and teaches creative writing at Western Carolina University.

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  Mark Powell

  Mark Powell is the author of nine novels, including Small Treasons—a SIBA Okra Pick, and a Southern Living Best Book of the Year—and Lioness. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, and twice from the Fulbright Foundation to Slovakia and Romania. In 2009, he received the Chaffin Award for contributions to Appalachian literature. He contributes frequently to the Oxford American and Garden & Gun, and holds degrees from the Citadel, the University of South Carolina, and Yale Divinity School. He directs the creative writing program at Appalachian State University.

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  Elizabeth Pratt

  Elizabeth Pratt joined Trellis Literary Management after working at Park, Fine & Brower and The Wylie Agency. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford, Elizabeth is actively building her own client list. She looks for fiction from diverse perspectives and emerging voices that takes something familiar and turns it on its head, recounts history from a different point of view, sheds light on something previously unnoticed, or makes us think about the world in a different way. Of particular interest to her are books with fantastical, speculative, or folkloric elements; sprawling, intergenerational family sagas; historical fiction set in locations not typically found in mainstream literature; and deep dives into the inner workings of human relationships. Originally from East Lansing, Michigan, Elizabeth currently lives in New York City.

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  Jamieson Ridenhour

  Jamieson Ridenhour is the writer and producer of the popular audio drama Palimpsest, the author of the werewolf murder-mystery Barking Mad (Typecast, 2011) and writer and director of the award-winning short horror films Cornerboys, The House of the Yaga, and Ratcatcher. His ghost play Grave Lullaby was a finalist for the Kennedy Center’s David Cohen Playwriting award in 2012. Jamie’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Across the Margins, Mirror Dance, and Architrave, among others, and has been podcast on Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders, and Radio Unbound. His audio drama Highgate Wood debuted in May of 2026.

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  Taylor Sykes

  Taylor Sykes is the author of the novella Many Small Disasters. Her writing has appeared in So to Speak, The Masters Review, Slash Magazine, NPR’s All Things Considered, the anthologies The Horror is Us and Dreamland: Other Stories, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the James Hurst Prize for Fiction and a 35 in 35 Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Originally from northwest Indiana, she has an MFA in fiction from North Carolina State University and teaches horror writing at UNC Asheville.