2025 Workshop Leaders
Crystal Wilkinson, Nonfiction
Crystal Wilkinson, a recent Kentucky poet laureate, has received praise for her books, short stories, poems, and essays. Her Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts (2024), a culinary memoir, was selected for Amazon’s Best Books of 2024. Her three works of fiction include Blackberries (2017), The Birds of Opulence (2016), and Water Street (2002). Her poetry collection, Perfect Black (2021), received an NAACP Image Award. She has also received an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence as well as praise from many arts organizations. She has written for The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Oxford American, and Southern Cultures. Wilkinson teaches writing as an endowed professor at the University of Kentucky.
David Joy, Fiction
David Joy has written several award-winning books, including Those We Thought We Knew (2024), winner of the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, the 2023 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His novels also include When These Mountains Burn (2023), The Line That Held Us (2019), The Weight of This World (2017), and Where All Light Tends to Go (2016), which was an Edgar finalist for Best First Novel and adapted into a film with Bill Bob Thornton and Robin Wright. His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared many places, and his work, deeply rooted to Appalachia, is translated into six languages. Joy, a native of North Carolina, lives in Tuckasegee, NC.
David Joy Official Author Site
Karen Spears Zacharias, Fiction
Karen Spears Zacharias is an award-winning author of many novels and nonfiction works. Formerly a journalist, her work focuses on women and justice. Her latest book, No Perfect Mothers (2024), is a fictionalized account of the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927, which upheld a state-enforced sterilization law in Virginia. Her book, The Murder Gene: A True Story (2022), combines true-crime storytelling with an examination of genetics and criminal behavior. Her debut novel, Mother of Rain (2013), was the fiction winner of the Weatherford Award for Best Books About Appalachia from Berea College. Zacharias has taught First Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and teaches writing workshops around the country. She lives in Deschutes County, Oregon.
Karen Spears Zacharias Official Author Site
Maurice Manning, Poetry
Maurice Manning has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Snakedoctor (2023). His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man (2010), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have been published in various journals and magazines, including Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Yorker, and Time. He and producer Steve Cody have also published ten episodes of The Grinnin’ Possum Podcast, featuring original poetry, old-time music, and history. Manning teaches at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and for the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
2025 Workshop Leaders
Crystal Wilkinson, Nonfiction
Crystal Wilkinson, a recent Kentucky poet laureate, has received praise for her books, short stories, poems, and essays. Her Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts (2024), a culinary memoir, was selected for Amazon’s Best Books of 2024. Her three works of fiction include Blackberries, Blackberries (2017), The Birds of Opulence (2016), and Water Street (2002). Her poetry collection, Perfect Black (2021), received an NAACP Image Award. She has also received an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence as well as praise from many arts organizations. She has written for The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Oxford American, and Southern Cultures. Wilkinson teaches writing as an endowed professor at the University of Kentucky.
David Joy, Fiction
David Joy has written several award-winning books, including Those We Thought We Knew (2024), winner of the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, the 2023 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His novels also include When These Mountains Burn (2023), The Line That Held Us (2019), The Weight of This World (2017), and Where All Light Tends to Go (2016), which was an Edgar finalist for Best First Novel and adapted into a film with Bill Bob Thornton and Robin Wright. His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared many places, and his work, deeply rooted to Appalachia, is translated into six languages. Joy, a native of North Carolina, lives in Tuckasegee, NC.
Karen Spears Zacharias, Fiction
Karen Spears Zacharias is an award-winning author of many novels and nonfiction works. Formerly a journalist, her work focuses on women and justice. Her latest book, No Perfect Mothers (2024), is a fictionalized account of the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927, which upheld a state-enforced sterilization law in Virginia. Her book, The Murder Gene: A True Story (2022), combines true-crime storytelling with an examination of genetics and criminal behavior. Her debut novel, Mother of Rain (2013), was the fiction winner of the Weatherford Award for Best Books About Appalachia from Berea College. Zacharias has taught First Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and teaches writing workshops around the country. She lives in Deschutes County, Oregon.
Maurice Manning, Poetry
Maurice Manning has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Snakedoctor (2023). His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man (2010), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have been published in various journals and magazines, including Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Yorker, and Time. He and producer Steve Cody have also published ten episodes of The Grinnin’ Possum Podcast, featuring original poetry, old-time music, and history. Manning teaches at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and for the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
