Heather Frese, who won the Lee Smith Novel Prize for her debut The Baddest Girl on the Planet, returns with her new book The Saddest Girl on the Beach. A freelance writer, Heather worked with Outer Banks publications as well as publishing short fiction, essays, poetry, and interviews in various literary journals. Coastal North Carolina is her longtime love and source of inspiration, her writing deeply influenced by the wild magic and history of the Outer Banks.

Lina Maslo is a children's book author and illustrator working in Anderson, South Carolina. Her new books is Threads: Zlata’s Ukrainian Shirt, inspired by the story of her Ukrainian grandparents. Lina's other books include Free as a Bird: The Story of Malala, which is a Library Guild Selection, CCBC Choice, and the winner of the Living the Dream Book Award, and Through the Wardrobe: How C. S. Lewis Created Narnia

Even though she currently lives in Oregon Karen Spears Zacharias is a familiar name to Southern readers for both her fiction and nonfiction work, which focuses on women and justice. Jeannette Walls caller her new novel, No Perfect Mothers, "both tragic and triumphant, a stunning reminder that we should learn from the lessons of our past."

Sarah Loudin Thomas is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including The Finder of Forgotten Things, The Right Kind of Fool, winner of the 2021 Selah Book of the Year, and Miracle in a Dry Season, winner of the 2015 INSPY Award. Her work in public relations for Biltmore Estate informs her new novel, These Tangled Threads, set in the historic Biltmore Plantation of the 1920s. A native of West Virginia, she and her husband now live in western North Carolina.