The Tenth Annual Rose Glen Literary Festival

The Tenth Annual Rose Glen Literary Festival presents the “write” stuff scheduled Saturday, February 23, 2019 from 9 am – 4 pm. This Smoky Mountain event is a must for all literature lovers. The Rose Glen Literary Festival, celebrating a decade of the “write” stuff, welcomes back the event’s first keynote speaker Stephen Lyn Bales who will discuss highlights of past festivals. Bale, a contributor to both the Smithsonian Magazine and Tennessee Conservation Magazine, is a regular speaker at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge. His published works also include Natural Histories and Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941.

This year’s festival lineup features a variety of successful and entertaining writers that includes luncheon keynote speaker Robert Beatty, author of the New York Times best-selling Serafina series, an eerie thriller that features a strange young woman who is a secret resident in the basement of the fabulous Biltmore House. Serafina and the Black Cloak spent more than 60 weeks on the Time’s best seller list and was also the recipient of the 2016 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. His second book in the series, which has proved popular with both young readers and adults, Serafina and the Twisted Staff, hit number one on the Times’ best seller list the week of its launch and earned a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.

His latest work, Willa of the Wood, introduces a young girl who possesses magical powers and lives in the forests of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now a full-time writer Beatty, who lives in Asheville, was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, the founder/CEO of Plex Systems, and co-founder of Beatty Robotics and chairman/CEO of Narrative Magazine.

Terry Roberts’s debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern fiction, and his second novel, That Bright Land, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the James Till Award for writing about the Appalachian South. Roberts will discuss his latest novel, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival.

Bill Carey is a columnist for Tennessee Magazine and founder of Tennessee History for Kids, a non-profit organization that assists educators who teach social studies and Tennessee history in improving their core curriculum. Carey’s book, Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History is ranked among the best Nashville history books of all time. His latest book, Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls, a History of Slavery in Tennessee, explores the humanitarian tragedy of slavery. Carey grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, spent five years in the Navy and has resided in Nashville since 1962.

Caitlin Hamilton Summie, a veteran Book publicist and marketing director, will walk writers through the basics of book publicity. A former marketing director of MacMurray & Beck and of Blue Hen Books/Penguin Putnam, Summie, during the course of her career, has help launch numerous authors, and published both short stories and poems. Her short story collection, To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts, earned excellent reviews nationwide and took Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year.

Marilyn Kallet is the author of 18 books, including The Love That Moves Me and Packing Light: New and Selected Poems. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Tennessee, where she taught for 37 years. Kallet is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Smoky Mountain hikes, mountain lore, disaster and mayhem are on the agenda during the GSMA Panel Discussions emceed by Sam Venable. Venable, a semi-retired humor columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentimental and winner of numerous writing awards, is the author of ten books. His newest collection is Someday I May find Honest Work, a newspaper Humorist’s Life. Venable’s lively commentary will offer entertaining and uncommon perspectives to common experiences. Panelists include Ben Anderson, author of Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Smokey Mountains National Park. Anderson, life-long devotee of the Smokies, is a former media relations director at Warren Wilson College and an assistant professor of Mass Communications at Florida Southern College, and has also worked on the staffs of The Asheville Times, the Atlanta Journal and other newspapers. A backcountry volunteer for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for more than 20 years, Anderson currently provides marketing and public relations work for the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation in Asheville.

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