A Greenville native and Furman University graduate, Tommy Hays is Lecturer Emeritus, recently retiring as Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville. He previously taught in the summer Honors and Academy creative writing programs at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.

His novel, The Pleasure Was Mine, set in Greenville, was a Finalist for the SIBA Fiction Award, read on NPR’s “Radio Reader” and was chosen for numerous community reads. Hays’s other novels are Sam’s Crossing and In the Family Way, also set in Greenville, was a Book of the Month Club selection and winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Hays’s middle grade novel, What I Came to Tell You, was an Okra Pick. He’s published stories and pieces in numerous publications including Redbook, The Chattahoochee Review, storySouth, Our State, and Smoky Mountain Living.

​Recently named to the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina, Hays is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a Board Member of the North Carolina Writer’s Network.