Tommy Hays is an acclaimed Southern writer, whose fiction grows out of his emotional connections to places he’s lived and known—Greenville, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Atlanta. His novels are The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press 2005), In the Family Way (Random House, 1999), Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum 1992), and YA novel What I Came to Tell You (Egmont, USA 2013). He has published stories, profiles and book reviews in magazines, newspapers and literary journals such as Redbook, Our State, The Atlanta Constitution, The Charlotte Observer, Smoky Mountain Living, Still:The Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, and storySouth. The winner of many literary awards, he is founder and former Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville’s community writing program as well as Lecturer Emeritus in the Master of Liberal Arts program. He is based in Asheville, NC.