Tommy Hays
Core MLAS Faculty, Director of the Great Smokies Writing ProgramContact Information
Tommy Hays’s first middle grade novel, What I Came to Tell You, now in paperback, was a VOYA Top Shelf Pick for Middle Grade Fiction 2014, a Fall 2013 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and has been chosen for the 2016 Ashe County Community Read. His novel, The Pleasure Was Mine, was a Finalist for the SIBA Fiction Award and has been numerous community reads. His other novels are Sam’s Crossing and In the Family Way, a Book of the Month Club selection and winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. He has an essay in the recently released State of the Heart: South Carolina Writers on the Places They Love, Volume 2 published by University of South Carolina Press. He is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and is Core Faculty for the Master of Liberal Arts and Sciences program at UNC Asheville. He teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program of Creative Writing at Murray State University in Kentucky and also at the Wildacres Writers Workshop. For more information please go to www.tommyhays.com.
Education
- B.A., Furman University
- M.F.A., Warren Wilson College
Recent Courses Taught
- MLAS 520, Advanced Creative Prose Workshop
- MLAS 520, A Prose Workshop: Fiction & Creative Non-fiction
- MLAS 520: Seminar on the Human Experience: Southern Literature