Heather Newton’s novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters (Turner Publishing, 2022) was a finalist for the Forword INDIES Book of the Year Award and has been optioned for television. Her short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House, 2022), was a finalist for both the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the W.S. Porter Prize. Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins, 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and named an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. She teaches creative writing for UNC-Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and Charlotte Lit, and is co-founder and program manager for the Flatiron Writers Room writers’ center in Asheville. Online: heathernewton.net and flatironwritersroom.com.
Kim Wright is the author of five novels—Love in Mid Air, The Unexpected Waltz, The Canterbury Sisters, Last Ride to Graceland, and The Longest Day of the Year. She is also an experienced nonfiction writer who has won awards in the field of food and travel writing. She teaches in Charlotte Lit’s Authors Lab, as well as at other regional programs including the Flatiron Writers Room in Asheville. As the Story Doctor she specializes in the developmental editing of novels.
Megan Rich has written two books, a YA novel and a travel memoir, and is seeking representation for her third, a literary thriller inspired by The Great Gatsby. She took part in the highly selective sub-concentration in creative writing at the University of Michigan, for which she completed a thesis of original poetry. She’s also a graduate of the selective Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project, and she is a 2022 recipient of the Arts & Science Council Charlotte’s Creative Renewal Fellowship. With 14 years’ experience as a creative writing teacher and mentor of students from ages 12 to 85, she is passionate about helping all writers find and refine their voices on the page.
Paul Reali co-founded Charlotte Lit (in 2016) and co-created Authors Lab (in 2017) with Kathie Collins. He won the 2023 Doris Betts Fiction Award and is a past winner of the Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Story and Ruth Moose Flash Fiction awards. His writing on creativity and business has been widely published, and his recent fiction can be found in the North Carolina Literary Review. He was awarded a Wildacres residency in 2022, and received a Regional Artist Project Grant from Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council in 2018. He has an M.S. in Creativity from Buffalo State University and an M.B.A. from Syracuse University. Contact: paul@charlottelit.org.
