Novel, 2023
Tommy’s novel, The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press), was a finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Fiction Award and was chosen for numerous community reads including “One City, One Book” in Greensboro and “The Amazing Read” in Greenville, SC; it was also read on NPR’s “Radio Reader” and South Carolina ETVRadio’s “Southern Read.”
His other adult novels are Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum) and In the Family Way (Random House), winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and a selection of the Book of the Month Club; his middle grade novel, What I Came to Tell You (Egmont USA), was chosen as a SIBA Okra Pick. Tommy’s stories have appeared in Redbook, Our State, Smoky Mountain Living, The Chattahoochee Review, and storySouth.
Tommy was recently inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors who have added to South Carolina’s literary legacy. In 2021 he was named to the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina. He currently serves on the North Carolina Writers’ Network’s Board of Trustees and is a member of National Book Critics Circle. He is the retired Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and Lecturer Emeritus in the Master of Liberal Arts program at UNC Asheville. He received his BA in English from Furman University and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
For more information, visit Tommy’s website.