2024 STORYFEST HOME

2024 Storyfest Schedule

Lynn Cullen

Lynn Cullen is the bestselling author of more than a half dozen historical novels, including The Woman With The Cure, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Twain’s End, Mrs. Poe and I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter. Her novel Mrs. Poe was named a Book of the Week by People Magazine, a Target Book Club Pick, an NPR 2013 Great Read, an Indie Next List selection and an Oprah Book of the Week. The Georgia Center for the Book called her follow-up novel, Twain’s End—a fictionalized imagining of the life of Mark Twain—a Book All Georgians Should Read. “Ms. Cullen is the Bronte of our day,” says the Huffington Post. Her novels have been translated into seventeen languages.

Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is a South Carolina-born journalist, screenwriter and author of six books, including the best-selling horror novels How To Sell a Haunted House and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Hendrix, who now lives in Manhattan, spent much of his childhood in public libraries. He worked for the American Society for Psychical Research before writing for Variety, The New York Post, Slate, Playboy and The Village Voice. His approach to horror is delightfully twisted. His 2014 novel Horrorstör is a comedy-horror novel set in an IKEA-like store. Amazon Prime turned his novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism into a 2022 supernatural comedy horror film. Two other books — including the 2021 novel The Final Girl Support Group — are slated for television adaptations. Goodreads calls him America’s best horror writer.

Tiffany Yates Martin

Tiffany Yates Martin is an author, book coach and popular conference speaker and instructor. A former copy editor for some of the industry’s top publishers, she works directly with major publishing houses, bestselling and award-winning authors, and new and indie-published authors. She holds a B.A. in English literature from Georgia State University and is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association. She has run workshops for Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman, Sisters in Crime and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Her 2020 book on editing — Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing — has been called “indispensable” and a “must-have” tool for writers. She has written six novels as Phoebe Fox, including The Way We Weren’t.

Alan Roth

Alan Roth graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey with degrees in history and English literature, then attended graduate school at Emerson College in Boston, where he received an MFA in creative writing. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and serves as an adjunct professor of screenwriting at Fairleigh Dickinson’s School of the Arts. He is a winner of the coveted Nicholl Fellowship Academy Award for best original screenplay (Jersey City Story) and works with producers on developing projects for both film and TV.

Cinelle Barnes is a memoirist, essayist and educator from the Philippines. Her debut memoir, Monsoon Mansion, was Bustle’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018. She is the author of Malaya: Essays on Freedom and the editor of the New York Times New & Noteworthy book A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writers of Color on the New American South. Her writing has appeared or been featured in the New York Times, Longreads, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed Reader, Literary Hub, Hyphen and CNN Philippines. The Charleston-based writer has received fellowships and grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, VONA, Kundiman, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund, the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant and Capita. She was a contributing editor, instructor and writer at Catapult and served as a juror for the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Memoir.

Jennifer Bartell Boykin

Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the poet laureate of the City of Columbia. She received an MFA from the University of South Carolina. Her debut book of poetry,Traveling Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2023), was released under the name Jennifer Bartell. Her second book Only Believe (The Word Works) won the 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Prize and is forthcoming in 2024. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Boykin is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and has additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole.

Amy Collins, an agent with the Talcott Notch Literary Services agency, has spent more than 30 years in the publishing industry as a book buyer, sales director for a large nonfiction publisher and founder of New Shelves Books, one of the largest book sales and marketing companies in the U.S. She focuses on nonfiction, history, historical fiction, fantasy and sci-fi. Collins, a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, has spent her career working with Barnes & Noble, Target, Costco, Books-A-Million and Walmart as well as bookstores and libraries. She’s a frequent speaker at writing festivals and conferences, including Publisher’s Weekly’s BookCon, NY PitchFest, Dallas Book Con and Writers Digest’s Annual Conference. She critiques writing samples through a boot camp offered each year by Writers Digest.

Barbara V. Evers is the author of The Watchers of Moniah epic fantasy trilogy (The Watchers of Moniah, The Watchers in Exile, The Watchers at War) as well as several short stories and essays. From the mysterious Dark Corner of South Carolina, she crafts fantasy stories with strong women matriarchies and unusually gifted and clever animals. A two-time winner of the Imadjinn Best Fantasy Novel, she has won several writing awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Petigru Review, moonShine review, Child of My Child, Stupefying Stories, A Magnificent Display of Marvelous Wonders, and her own short story collection, Pieces of Her: Being a Woman is Not for the Faint of Heart. Evers is a supporter and advocate for animal conservation and seeks to educate others about endangered species. The giraffes in The Watchers of Moniah trilogy are no longer endangered, but giraffes in our world are suffering a silent extinction. As an advocate, Evers contributes a portion of her royalties to support the work of The Giraffe Conservation Foundation. When she’s not writing, she uses her degrees in zoology and communication to conduct training workshops for businesses. Maybe she really can speak to animals! Any other time, she can be found herding her husband, two grandchildren and her rescue dog, Roxy (but don’t tell them).

Renee C. Fountain

Renee C. Fountain champions various genres, ranging from adult thrillers to informative nonfiction and close-to-her-heart YA. Over the years, Fountain has helped launch several crime thriller writers and series, including Sarah Cain’s The 8th Circle, Michel Logan’s Hell’s Detective and Jonathan Fredrick’s Cain City series. Before putting on her agent hat, she spent five years working for the CW television network as a book scout and story analyst for television development. She spent nearly a decade working in major publishing houses, including Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster, where she worked with some of the best writers and illustrators in the publishing world. In addition to looking for the next best-seller, Fountain also can be found on the faculty of Manuscript Academy, providing developmental editing and writing critiques.

Mindy Friddle is author of the forthcoming novel Her Best Self as well as Secret Keepers (winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction). The Garden Angel, her first novel and SIBA bestseller, was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers. The South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Friddle a prose fellowship, and she twice has won the state’s Fiction Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson and lives on Edisto Island, South Carolina.

Andrew Geyer

Andrew Geyer is the author, co-author and editor of 11 books, including the novels Dixie Fish and Meeting the Dead and the short story collection Lesser Mountains, winner of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal for Regional/Southern Fiction. His short stories have won numerous accolades, including two Spur Awards for Best Short Story from the Western Writers of America. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, Geyer chairs the Department of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken. He is the former fiction editor of the Concho River Review and the 2024 managing editor of SCWA’s literary journal, The Petigru Review.

Scott Gould

Scott Gould is the author of five books, including the 2023 short story collection Idiot Men; The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. His other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. His work has appeared in several publications, including Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Pangyrus, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Garden & Gun and New Stories from the South. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina, and teaches at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities.

Nicole Jock

Nicole Jock is a publishing consultant from Delaware with a degree in communications from the University of Phoenix. Jock ventured into the realm of publishing, choosing to start her journey by relocating to Charleston, South Carolina. She immersed herself in the multifaceted landscape of the publishing industry, discovering her true passion for fostering meaningful connections with authors from diverse cultural and creative backgrounds. When not assisting authors in navigating the intricacies of the publishing world, Jock can be found displaying her allegiance to the Washington Commanders, proudly adorned in their colors as she passionately cheers them on, embodying the spirit of a devoted enthusiast.

Dr. Dianne (Dinah) Johnson is a literary historian and an English professor at the University of South Carolina. Her work has helped to document the history of African American children’s literature. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, she has is the author of H is for Harlem and Indigo Dreaming. She attended Princeton University and earned her Ph.D. at Yale University.

Michael A. Murray

Michael A. Murray is a literary and visual artist who always has allowed his love for art and community to steer his sense of purpose in the right direction. During his tenure as mentor and director of Poetry at the Rebuilding Individual Character Habits (R.I.C.H.) program, Murray has attained tremendous insight into the often misunderstood, but always inventive minds of the black artistic Southern youth. That insight carried over into his foundation of the NU GRWTH Artist Collective and continuous collaborative efforts with other activists and organizations to create programming centered around the development, support and sustainability of local artists. As a photographer and poet, Murray has had several works featured in The State newspaper, Cr8 Augusta, Charlotte is Creative and more. As a community organizer, founder/manager of Playlixt LLC and co-founder of Blue Note Poetry, he has curated over eight years of innovative events showcasing the many faces, voices, and styles of performance art.

Alex Rath

Alex Rath is a best-selling military science fiction and post-apocalyptic author, who lives in Columbia, South Carolina. With works published in the Four Horsemen Universe, This Fallen World, and the Salvage Title universe, Rath has now spread out with his own Colonization Science Fiction with the Terran Space Project, starting with Seeds of Terra. He has been an IT professional for more than years. He has worked as a programmer/developer, webmaster, information security specialist and solutions design specialist. This background allows him to incorporate some technical savvy into his stories, while his experience interacting with non-technical customers allows him to do so in a way that isn’t confusing, or “too technical” for a layperson to understand.

Nicholas Read has his juris doctorate from the Mississippi College School of Law. He got his start in publishing with an international publishing house in New York City, where he oversaw the funding, publication and distribution of niche reports published and distributed in newspapers consisting of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today and The London Times. Read worked with Fortune 500 and 100 companies to deliver top class marketing campaigns to global audiences. He has helped hundreds of authors, entrepreneurs and business leaders publish books to bring their stories to the world as not only a means of growing their brand and business but to touch the world through the written word. Before serving as a senior publishing consultant at Palmetto Publishing, Read served as a vice president for the publishing imprint of a global media brand.

Chad Rhoad

Chad Rhoad is an editor at the Charleston-based Arcadia Press. He earned an MFA in fiction from the University of South Carolina. The former journalist and newspaper editor has been a project editor for more than 350 titles in history, true crime, fiction and culture. He has appeared at the Atlanta Writer’s Conference, the Florida Writer’s Association and SCWA's 2023 Storyfest. He teaches writing and literature at the university level. Says James C. Clark, the author of A History Lover’s Guide to Florida: “Chad Rhoad has made scores of books better and their authors more successful with his deft editing touch.”