Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, poet, novelist, and memoirist from Pike County, Kentucky. He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020). Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016), Alice and the Wendigo (Secret History Books, 2017), and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019). His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore, was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection Runaways was published 2021 by Alien Buddha Press. In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton. On the anniversary of Breece D'J Pancake Cowboy Jamboree Press published his memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound: One author's connection with Breece D'J Pancake. In 2012, he was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and was twice longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50 in 2015 and 2019. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019. Aside from his primary writing, he is the founder and editor of the literary journal Revolution John and the founder and curator of the interview project Chaos Questions: Strange Interviews with Amazing People.

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. For the software engineer, see John McManus.

Chris Holbrook’s first book, Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, was published in 1995 by Gnomon Press. His stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals; have been included in the anthologies Groundwater, Kentucky Voices, Home and Beyond, and A Kentucky Christmas; and have received first-place awards in contests sponsored by Now and Then magazine (1994) and Louisville magazine (1995 and 1997). Chris has held residency fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. In 1988 and again in 1998, he received Al Smith Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council. In 1997, Chris was presented the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Celebration of Appalachian Writing. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, Chris earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Morehead State University and has taught at Alice Lloyd College. He grew up in Soft Shell, KY, in Knott County.

Silas House is the nationally bestselling author of six novels—Clay's Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012; Southernmost (2018), as well as a book of creative nonfiction, Something's Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and three plays. His work frequently appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Salon. He is former commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered". His writing has appeared in recently in Time, Ecotone, Oxford American, Garden and Gun, and many other publications. House serves on the fiction faculty at the Spalding School of Writing and as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at Berea College. As a music writer House has worked with artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, Lee Ann Womack, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, The Judds, Jim James, and many others. House is the recipient of three honorary doctorates and is the winner of the Nautilus Award, an EB White Award, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Appalachian Book of the Year, and many other honors.