Sharyn McCrumb
Sharyn McCrumb, an award-winning Southern writer, is best known for her Appalachian “Ballad” novels, including the New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, and The Songcatcher. Ghost Riders, which won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature from the East Tennessee Historical Society and the national Audie Award for Best Recorded Books. The Unquiet Grave, a well-researched novel about West Virginia's Greenbrier Ghost, will be published in September by Atria, a division of Simon &Schuster.
Sharyn McCrumb, named a Virginia Woman of History by the Library of Virginia and a Woman of the Arts by the national Daughters of the American Revolution, was awarded the Mary Hobson Prize for Arts & Letters in 2014. Her books have been named New York Times and Los Angeles Times Notable Books. In addition to presenting programs at universities, libraries, and other organizations throughout the US, Sharyn McCrumb has taught a writers workshop in Paris, and served as writer-in-residence at King University in Tennessee, and at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York.
“Oh, son, hardly anybody wants to leave. These mountains are more than just a place for folks around here.”
“Mountains have long-lost kinfolk on the other side of the Atlantic. The bloodline that marks that kinship is a vein of a green mineral called serpentine ...”
“Is the groom going to go where no man has gone before?”
“Romulan or Vulcan?' the ushers asked each guest.Marion, who had been poised to say 'friends of the bride' had responded to the question with an open-mouthed stare, and Jay Omega answered, 'Klingon!" which got them seats in the back row of the Romulan side.”
“Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You'd better find out if you're any good at it before you start charging for it.”
“It couldn't be the beer. Donnie McRory was certain of that. If you sent American beer out to be analyzed, the lab would probably phone up and say, 'Your horse has diabetes.”
“The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap.”
“The people who live happily ever after - they don't appear in the history books. They just fade away. I reckon that's what happiness is.Pauline Foster - " The Ballad of Tom Dooley ", Sharyn McCrumb, p. 271”
“Boondocks' is simply the Tagalog word for mountains.”