Faculty

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  Michele Tracy Berger

  Michele Tracy Berger is the director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She has faculty appointments in the Departments of English and Religious Studies. Her short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction has appeared in 100 Word Story, Apex Magazine, Glint Literary Journal, The Wild Word, Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Midnight and Indigo, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Carolina Woman, Ms., and various anthologies. She is the 2019 winner of the Carl Brandon Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society for her story “Doll Seed” published in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. Much of her work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender. Her short story collection Doll Seed will be published by Aunt Lute Books in fall 2024.

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  Julie Funderburk

  Julie Funderburk is the author of The Door That Always Opens from LSU Press. She has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the North Carolina Arts Council, and her latest poetry appears in The Southern Review, Ecotone, Blackbird, Pleiades, and the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy. She serves on the NCWN Board of Trustees and teaches at Queens University of Charlotte.

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  Halle Hill

  Halle Hill is the author of Good Women (Hub City Press), which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Southwest Review. She is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize, the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 ASME Award for Fiction. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in Joyland, New Limestone Review, Ursa Short Fiction, and the Oxford American, among others. A born and raised East Tennessean, she currently lives, works, and teaches in North Carolina.

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  Erica Allen McGee

  Erica Allen McGee (www.ericamcgee.com) has written 2 nationally produced musicals (book and score) and one musical unpublished, 8 children’s musicals, and three holiday pageants. She has also written several ten-minute plays and two straight plays. Her shows Girls Raised in the South-GRITS: The Musical and Cinnamon GRITS: Christmas in the South are published by Broadway Licensing and have been performed all over the US. Her new musical DeWitched has been workshopped in Charlotte and her children’s plays have been produced through her children’s theater organization, Playground Players in the Carolinas. Erica’s newest play, Oy Vey Y’all, landed her the 2024 Screen Craft Mentorship Prize. She recently received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mount Saint Mary’s University in LA and her personal essays have been featured in a wide range of publications. Erica is the Dramatist Guild Ambassador for North Carolina. She lives in Charlotte.

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  Kate Arden McMullen

  Kate Arden McMullen (she/her) is the Managing Editor of Hub City Press, a nonprofit independent publisher of extraordinary writers from the American South. She is on the hunt for voice-driven books from the margins of Southern experience. Kate received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and began her publishing career at UNCW’s Lookout Books. A fiction writer, she is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee and 2015 winner of the Colbert Chapbook Award. She lives in Spartanburg, SC.

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  Joseph Mills

  A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair, the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities, and has been honored with a UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has published eight volumes of poetry, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems about Dance. His book This Miraculous Turning was awarded the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family. In 2025, Press 53 will publish his collection The Holiday Cycle. His work also includes a collection of fiction, Bleachers, which consists of fifty-four linked pieces that take place during a youth soccer game. More information is available at www.josephrobertmills.com.

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  Valerie Nieman

  Valerie Nieman‘s historical novel, Upon the Corner of the Moon, releases in spring 2025. This is the story of the Macbeths you never knew, rightful rulers who united Scotland in the tumultuous 11th century. The second of the two ALBA books, The Last Highland King, will appear in 2027. In the Lonely Backwater, winner of the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, has been called “not only a page turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” To the Bones, a horror/Appalachian/ecojustice novel, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, and now has a sequel, Dead Hand. She is the author of three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry books. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has held state and NEA fellowships and is  professor emerita of creative writing at NC A&T State University.

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  Jacob Paul

  Jacob Paul is the author of Last Tower to Heaven (C&R, 2019) and two previous novels, A Song of Ilan (Jaded Ibis, 2015) and Sarah/Sara (Ig, 2010), which Poets & Writers named one of 2010’s five best first fictions. His collaborations have led to the fine art books, Home for an Hour (Otherwise, 2014) and Feed Mayonnaise to Tuna (Otherwise, 2016). His work has also appeared in numerous print and digital publications. He teaches creative writing at High Point University in North Carolina. More at www.jacobgpaul.com/bio

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  Jamie Rogers Southern

  Jamie Rogers Southern is the Executive Director of Bookmarks, a literary arts nonprofit based in Winston-Salem. She previously served for ten years as Operations Director of Bookmarks, expanding the organization’s programming and outreach to include a nonprofit independent bookstore in 2017. Prior to moving to Winston-Salem, she worked as an Education Coordinator for the American Booksellers Association based in New York. She is the immediate Past President of the Board of the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and serves on the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership board, is a Winston-Salem Rotary Club member, and is in Leadership Winston-Salem’s Flagship Class of 2024. She lives in Winston-Salem with her husband and children.

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  Zackary Vernon

  Zackary Vernon is a writer and scholar based in Boone. His work has appeared in a range of magazines and journals, including The Bitter Southerner, Carolina Quarterly, and Southern Cultures, and he has received both the Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Randall Kenan Prize from the North Carolina Literary Review. He is the author of the YA novel Our Bodies Electric.

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  Ross White

  Ross White is the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He is the author of Charm Offensive, winner of the Sexton Prize for Poetry, and three chapbooks: How We Came Upon the Colony, The Polite Society, and Valley of Want. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. He is Director of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-hosts The Chapbook, a podcast devoted to tiny, delightful collections.

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  Michael G. Williams

  Michael G. Williams writes queer horror, sci-fi, and urban fantasy about outsiders finding their people, including A Fall in Autumn (Manly Wade Wellman Award), Perishables (Laine Cunningham Award), and Servant Sovereign. He co-hosts the folklore podcast Arcane Carolinas and lives in Durham, NC, with his husband and various animals.