Authors

The writers who find their way to Pisgah Press reflect the very best of our creative spirit.

They are bold and determined, talented and gracious, and eager for their work to find an audience as dedicated to fine writing as they are. They also reflect remarkably wide-ranging backgrounds.


Jan Bevan author close lo res

Jan Atchley Bevan

Jan Atchley Bevan is an author of poetry and children’s books and was Author in Residence of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens Jacksonville, Florida from 2000 to 2008. She was a literary art educator in the Education Department of the Cummer Museum and went into the public schools to promote reading and writing […]

Barry Burgess

Barry Burgess

Barry Burgess grew up on Long Island in a time when the vineyards were still potato farms. He and his brother raised pet crows and were often seen cawing at the sky. After attending Vassar College, where he explored his interests in biology and ballet and made lifelong friends, he enrolled in the Harkness School […]

Donna Lisle Burton portrait

Donna Lisle Burton

Donna Lisle Burton grew up beside the Ohio River in eastern Ohio, in an area of coal mines and steel mills, now mostly gone. For most of her life she lived in the South, where she worked as a special education teacher. She spent more than a decade in Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama, and lived […]

Michael Amos Cody

Michael Amos Cody

Michael Amos Cody is a professor in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University. After working as a songwriter in Nashville, he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Carolina. His short fiction has appeared in The Tampa Review, Yemassee, and other publications, and his albums include Homecoming […]

Reinhold C. Ferster

Reinhold C. Ferster

Reinhold C. Ferster was  born in Buffalo, NY, and studied commercial art at the University of Buffalo and Rochester Institute of Technology. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard destroyers and later, as an illustrator in the Admiral’s Public Information Office, Newport, Rhode Island. He also served simultaneously as a 2nd Lt., Rhode Island Militia, […]

Robin Gaiser

Robin Russell Gaiser

Robin Russell Gaiser grew up the daughter of a trained classical musician and teacher, whose approach was literally by the book: study theory, follow the score, play in the key as written, avoid improvisation or experimentation. As a small child with perfect pitch and instant, complete recall, Robin played by ear what she heard in […]

Joseph R. Haun

Joe Haun

Dr. Joseph R. Haun earned his doctorate in Plant Physiology from the University of Maryland and spent his professional career in corporate and government research and as a professor at Clemson University. He is best known for the widely used Haun scale, which quantifies daily plant growth. During Haun’s nine decades of life, America and […]

Chris Highland

Chris Highland

Chris Highland was a Protestant minister and interfaith chaplain for many years before becoming a humanist celebrant. With a degree in Religion and Philosophy from evangelical Seattle Pacific University and an M.Div. from a diverse consortium of seminaries (Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley), he has been active in “presence ministry” and nonprofit work in a […]

H. N. Hirsch

H. N. Hirsch’s Fault Line, the second in the Bob & Marcus Mystery Series, available now! H. N. Hirsch is a political scientist and just-retired university professor as well as an accomplished writer. Born in Chicago and educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton, Hirsch has taught at Harvard, the University of California-San Diego, […]

Michael Hopping

Michael Hopping

Michael Hopping lives near Asheville, North Carolina. In a former life he was a practicing psychiatrist and medical director for a community mental health center. In search of less industrialized approaches to coping with today’s world, he eventually left the field. His short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Spoiled Ink, The Great Smokies […]

C. Robert Jones

C. Robert Jones

C. Robert Jones holds degrees from the Universities of South Carolina and Georgia and from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Dijon on a Fulbright grant. He launched his professional career by directing twenty-six shows back to back in four […]

Martin A. Keeley

Martin A. Keeley

British-born Martin Keeley’s varied careers took him to East Africa, the Far East, Alaska, and elsewhere around the world before he settled in western Canada and, after his marriage, in Point Roberts, WA, on the Puget Sound just south of Vancouver, BC. He has been a photo-journalist, theater performer and director, and international environmental activist, and […]

Al & Sunny Lockwood

Al and Sunny Lockwood have traveled by foot, car, rail, air and cruise ship. They’ve camped in national parks, hiked mountain trails, photographed springtime flowers in Death Valley and wintry surf along the rugged beaches of Northern California. They’ve watched July 4th fireworks over Lake Tahoe, explored the Taos Pueblo and ridden the Great Smoky […]

Peter Loewer

Peter Loewer

H. Peter Loewer is a writer, graphic artist, photographer, and botanical illustrator who deals with books on natural history, gardening, great gardeners, and science for children. He has written over thirty books on gardening and natural history, including the award-winning The Wild Gardener and Thoreau’s Garden. Peter lives in Asheville and gardens on the shores […]

Jeff Douglas Messer

Jeff Messer

Jeff Douglas Messer got his start at a young age, writing the spring play for his fifth-grade class. A decade later his first professional play was produced by Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in his hometown of Waynesville, NC. It was the first approved play about the famed composer Irving Berlin. Many plays followed, as did […]

Mort Malkin Peace Path

Mort Malkin

Mort Malkin, who died unexpectedly in early July, was a polymath. He was in turn—and sometimes simultaneously—a decathlete, a surgeon and teacher of others, an artist, a poet, an archaeologist, and a collector of artifacts from the Neolithic and Sumerian periods. His newest book, released by Pisgah Press on April 13, reflects the broad range […]

Peter Olevnik

Peter Olevnik

Peter Olevnik grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a former manufacturing center at the confluence of three rivers — the Maumee, St. Joseph, and St. Mary’s — in the northeastern corner of the state. A lover of language and art throughout his life, he earned his PhD at the State University of NY at Buffalo, […]

Levi Plesset

Levi Plesset

Author Levi Plesset grew up in a pre-Civil War farmhouse in Meigs County, Ohio, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where he developed a passion for animals, gardening, and cooking. As a youngster, he enjoyed reading books by William Steig, daydreaming in a hammock, and telling stories while perched in an apple tree. He […]

Patrick O'Sullivan

Patrick O’Sullivan

For decades Patrick O’Sullivan jotted notes on the back of bar napkins, envelopes and sandwich wrappers – whatever was handy. He’d squirrel them away in a drawer or in a file folder and as the collection swelled so did the need to tell his story. In the winter of 2010, bored and unfulfilled with his […]

A. D. Reed

A. D. Reed spent more than 25 years writing ad copy, marketing materials, fiction, and nonfiction as he worked for large corporations, small retailers, nonprofit organizations, and monthly newspapers, while also editing the work of scores of other writers. His first book project was as a proofreader for Simon & Schuster’s Webster’s NewWorld Dictionary, Third […]

Dave Richards

Dave Richards

Connecticut native Dave Richards served seven years in the U. S. Army, primarily in military intelligence. While serving in that field, he received more than two years of Russian language instruction and specialized training for an assignment in West Berlin as a transcriber of Soviet military communications. Following his service commitment, he attended George Washington […]

Sarah-Ann Smith

Sarah-Ann Smith

Sarah-Ann Smith’s passion for Asia led her to earn a degree in international relations and Asian studies and to a career in the U.S. diplomatic corps. Her tours of duty took her to Taiwan to study Mandarin Chinese and to the American Consulate in Hong Kong as well as within the Foggy Bottom headquarters of […]

Nan Socolow

Nan Socolow

Born in New York City, where she grew up in an apartment overlooking the storied square of Gramercy Park, Nan Socolow first studied poetry at Connecticut College with William Meredith, later the U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. At Princeton University, where she was the first Administrator of Rockefeller College, she studied […]

RF Wilson

RF Wilson

More than three decades of work in the field of addiction and recovery have had a significant influence on RF Wilson’s fiction. In addition to his Rick Ryder mysteries he has written nearly two dozen short stories including several published in anthologies of contemporary fiction. An avid hiker, he is also interested in music, movies, […]