Get to know 6 North Carolina authors and discover a book from each that captures the people, places, and stories of the state.
If you’ve ever looked out at the breathtaking Blue Ridge Mountains, wandered beneath the waterfalls of the Great Smoky Mountains, or gazed across the pristine beaches of the Outer Banks and wished you could find the right words to capture the beauty of these places, I have good news for you: North Carolina is home to a number of famous authors who have taken up a pen and put the state’s beauty, character, and uniqueness into words.
All the way from the misty peaks of the Appalachian Mountains to the windswept shores of Cape Hatteras, the beauty of the Outer Banks, and the quiet everyday musings of its smallest towns, North Carolina has long provided inspiration for storytellers and poets.
Here are 6 North Carolina authors and one of their best books to read.
Wiley Cash
“You’re somebody, just as good as anybody.” — Wiley Cash, “The Last Ballad”
Born and raised in North Carolina, Wiley Cash wrote four novels: “When Ghosts Come Home,” “The Last Ballad,” “This Dark Road to Mercy,” and “A Land More Kind Than Home.” His work shares the Southern Gothic qualities found in American classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “The Road.” He intelligently blends family drama, suspense, and history into stories rooted in the American South. In addition to his novels, Cash writes short stories and essays. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina Asheville.
Cash has a new novel, “Same River Twice,” coming out in April 2027. Like his earlier novels, the book promises suspenseful storytelling that is both thoughtful and unafraid to confront history and the difficult truths that come with it.
For your “To Read” pile: “The Last Ballad”
Imagine: your four children have just fallen asleep, and now it’s time to walk two miles to the American Mill, the same two-mile journey you make 12 times a week just to make ends meet after your husband has abandoned you and your children. After 72 hours of weekly, dangerous, grueling work, you earn just nine dollars, barely enough to keep your family alive. But what choice do you have? There is none. That is, until a union leaflet falls into your hands and you realize a better life may be possible. However, the mill owners will do anything to keep you from joining the union.
That’s the story of Ella May Wiggins, the real-life woman in Wiley Cash’s “The Last Ballad.” Set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by the true events surrounding the Loray Mill strike, the novel follows Ella as she finds her voice in the growing labor movement. A mother struggling to provide for her children, Ella is also a talented songwriter who begins using her music and her voice to speak out for workers.
Cash paints a complicated picture of a community divided by poverty, racism, power, and the fight for better working conditions, bringing a forgotten history to life through a human story. It is a tribute to Ella May Wiggins and all of the men and women who fought alongside her.
Thomas Wolfe
“It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South—so much in balance, in agreement—and yet…the whole world lies between.” — Thomas Wolfe, “You Can’t Go Home Again”
Believe it or not, there was a time when one of North Carolina’s most famous authors, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), was so unpopular in Asheville that he was essentially unwelcome there. Why? Because he wrote a little too honestly about his hometown and upbringing in his first novel, “Look Homeward, Angel.”
Although the novel was fictionalized, its characters and events closely mirrored Wolfe’s own life and the people of Asheville. Locals recognized themselves in its pages, and the controversy became so intense that the book was banned from Asheville’s public library for a period of time.
Yet his honesty is part of what made him such a remarkable and memorable writer. That, and his genius. He entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at just 15 years old in 1916 and quickly became known for his extraordinary writing ability. He was also incredibly prolific, reportedly writing at astonishing speed. During his lifetime, he produced an impressive body of work, including novels, short stories, plays, and essays. However, he is best known for his novels, particularly “Look Homeward, Angel.” Wolfe died in 1938 at 37, leaving behind a lasting literary legacy.
Today, he is remembered for the honesty and intensity of his writing, as well as his ability to explore the human heart, memory, identity, and the complexities of the human experience.
For your “To Read” pile: “You Can’t Go Home Again”
If “Look Homeward, Angel” was Wolfe’s telling of his upbringing in Asheville, “You Can’t Go Home Again” is, in many ways, a fictionalized retelling of the novel’s aftermath.
“You Can’t Go Home Again” follows George Webber, a young writer who finds great success with a novel about his family and hometown. Sound familiar? Like Wolfe, Webber discovers that not everyone is thrilled to see their lives written about. His hometown is outraged by the book, and the backlash forces him to leave, sending him on a journey from New York to Paris and eventually to Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power.
As Webber travels, he begins questioning the fame and success he once wanted so badly, while also trying to understand who he is and where he belongs. Wolfe uses his journey to explore the changing American landscape, the lure and cost of the American Dream, greed, ambition, love, loss, and the ways people can become strangers to the places they once called home.
Though written in 1934, “You Can’t Go Home Again” is still relevant. The world around us may change, but people remain remarkably consistent. We fall in love, lose hope, chase our dreams, betray one another, feel guilt, wrestle with who we have become, and try to find our way back to what matters.
Wolfe’s novel is ultimately a meditation on something we can all understand or perhaps something we’ve even experienced: Sometimes, going home means figuring out where you belong now rather than just returning to the place you came from.
Note: This novel was published posthumously in 1940, after Wolfe’s death, and was assembled from the extensive manuscripts he left behind.
Nicholas Sparks
“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.” — Nicholas Sparks, “A Walk to Remember”
The name Nicholas Sparks and “romance” are practically synonymous at this point. Most people know him for his debut novel, “The Notebook,” which was turned into a film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. But this North Carolina writer has more novels to his name than you might think. To date, he has published 25 novels, 16 of which have made the New York Times bestsellers list, and 11 of which have been adapted into movies.
“The Notebook” wasn’t actually Sparks’ first book. Before turning to romance novels, he co-wrote a nonfiction book about Lakota spiritual beliefs and practices. The book found some success, but nothing compared to “The Notebook,” which landed on the bestseller list within its first week. From there, Sparks continued writing romance novels, many of which went on to become bestsellers and major motion pictures.
Sparks was born in Nebraska and attended the University of Notre Dame before eventually settling in New Bern, North Carolina, with his then-wife, Cathy. Since moving there, he has become involved in the community in ways that extend well beyond his novels. In 2006, he and Cathy co-founded The Epiphany School, a private school focused on global education. As an avid runner and college athlete, Sparks also spent years coaching track and field at New Bern High School and donated nearly a million dollars to help build a new track.
For your “To Read” pile: “A Walk to Remember”
While “The Notebook” may be Nicholas Sparks’ most popular novel, “A Walk to Remember” carries a significant weight to it. Inspired by his sister’s battle with cancer and her eventual death at the age of 33, Sparks wrote the novel as a way to share her story and the kind of love she believed in.
The story follows Landon Carter, a popular but rebellious high school student who falls for the least predictable person: Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town’s Baptist minister. Jamie was quiet, always carrying a Bible, took care of her father, rescued hurt animals, and volunteered at the orphanage. She was perfectly content in her own world, separate from the teenagers around her.
Landon, on the other hand, was more interested in cheerleaders and having a good time than in anything Jamie had to offer. The two are paired together for a homecoming project, and Landon’s life begins to change in ways he never expected.
As Landon falls in love with Jamie, we witness him grow from a selfish teenager into someone capable of putting another person before himself. It’s a story about how loving someone deeply has the power to transform us. Jamie changes Landon’s life in ways he never could have imagined. The story is a beautiful account of love and a heartbreaking account of loss.
Diane Chamberlain
“You have to make peace with the past or you can never move into the future.” — Diane Chamberlain, “Big Lies in a Small Town”
Diane Chamberlain is a New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times bestselling author. Although she grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, spent summers at the Jersey Shore, and later lived in San Diego and Virginia, she considers North Carolina her true home, and the state has inspired many of the settings in her novels.
Her path to becoming a novelist took a roundabout route. Chamberlain earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from San Diego State University before working in youth counseling and medical social work in San Diego and Washington, D.C. She eventually opened a private psychotherapy practice in Virginia, specializing in adolescents. But while working as a hospital social worker in San Diego, she began writing a story she had carried in her mind since adolescence. While waiting for a doctor’s appointment, she pulled out a pen and pad, started writing, and couldn’t stop.
That story became “Private Relations,” her first novel, which took four years to complete and eventually won the 1989 RITA Award for Best Single Title Contemporary Romance Novel. Since then, Chamberlain has written stories that weave together suspense, history, time travel, and family relationships, complete with plenty of emotional twists. Her background as a social worker and psychotherapist continues to influence her writing, particularly her fascination with the complicated ways people relate to one another.
For your “To Read” pile: “Big Lies in a Small Town”
In “Big Lies in a Small Town,” Diane Chamberlain lyrically weaves together the stories of two women separated by nearly 80 years but connected through a mysterious mural. In 2018, Morgan Christopher is serving time in a North Carolina prison for a crime she didn’t commit when she receives an unexpected offer: restore a decades-old mural, and she’ll be released. Despite being an experienced artist, she knows nothing about restoring art, and the mural is in far worse shape than she imagined, but she will do anything to get out of prison.
The mural was painted in 1940 by Anna Dale, a young artist from New Jersey who won a national competition to create a post office mural in Edenton, North Carolina. Anna does not receive a warm welcome when she arrives. Some locals resent that an outsider beat a local male artist for the job, while others take issue with Anna’s controversial vision for the mural. Then, before the painting is finished, Anna disappears… along with the mural.
As Morgan painstakingly restores the damaged painting, she becomes increasingly obsessed with Anna and the secrets hidden beneath its layers of grime and paint. Told through alternating timelines, “Big Lies in a Small Town” is part historical fiction and part mystery; it tells the story of two women trying to find their way in worlds that aren’t willing to make room for outsiders.
Anne Tyler
“Anger feels so much better than sadness, cleaner somehow and more definite. But then, when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again, the same as ever.” — Anne Tyler, “Three Days in June”
Author Anne Tyler grew up in an unusual Quaker community in the mountains of North Carolina, where she lived from age 7 to 11 and never attended a traditional public school. When her family moved to Raleigh, she suddenly found herself navigating a foreign world. This sense of being an outsider would follow her throughout much of her life.
It was also in Raleigh, with new access to public libraries, that Tyler discovered new writers and books and began to see the everyday details of life as worthy of a story. Her own storytelling began much earlier; at just three years old, she would crawl under the covers and tell herself stories until she fell asleep.
Tyler graduated from Duke University at 19 with a degree in Russian literature before briefly attending Columbia University for graduate work in Slavic Studies. She eventually returned to Duke, where she worked in the library, met her future husband, and began writing short stories and her first novel. After marrying and having two daughters, she settled in Baltimore, where she has lived ever since and where many of her novels are set. She wrote literary reviews for years while raising her family and before returning her full attention to fiction.
Today, Tyler is the author of 25 novels, including “Breathing Lessons,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989.
For your “To Read” pile: “Three Days in June”
Mystery. Love. Ghosts of the past. A wedding in question. Family dysfunction. A cat? In Anne Tyler’s novella “Three Days in June,” Gail Baines is going through it. She is 61, long divorced, lonely, and not a natural when it comes to people and relationships. Even her relationship with her grown daughter, Debbie, is fairly nonexistent, and now that very daughter is getting married.
The day before the wedding, Gail’s ex-husband shows up at her door unannounced, without a suit or a place to stay, but with a foster cat he needs to find a home for. On top of that, Debbie arrives with a secret about her fiancé that throws the entire wedding into question. Suddenly, Gail is forced to confront not only the future of her daughter’s marriage but the ghosts of her own.
Told over three days—the day before the wedding, the wedding day, and the day after—the story slowly peels back the layers of Gail’s past relationship while exploring the complicated ways families love, hurt, forgive, and grow.
It is funny, tender, and wonderfully ordinary, with Tyler finding meaning in the little details of everyday life.
Charles Frazier
“[No] matter what a waste one has made of one’s life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.” — Charles Frazier, “Cold Mountain”
Born in Asheville and raised in the small western North Carolina towns of Andrews and Franklin, Charles Frazier grew up surrounded by the mountains that would eventually become the backdrop for his best-known work, “Cold Mountain.” He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before earning graduate degrees from Appalachian State University and the University of South Carolina. Along the way, he taught English, traveled through the Andes, and co-wrote a Sierra Club guidebook about the region.
He did not start writing fiction until later, when a family story inspired Frazier to try his hand at a novel. His father told him about a great-great-uncle who had fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, was wounded, deserted the army, and made his way home to the mountains of North Carolina. The story stuck with him, and he began researching the history, culture, folklore, and natural landscape of the region while teaching at North Carolina State University. Eventually, with the encouragement of his wife, he left teaching to focus on writing full-time.
The result of his hard work was “Cold Mountain,” published in 1997. The novel became an international bestseller, spent 61 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and won the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film and an opera. Frazier has since written four more novels. All of his work explores history, landscape, and the lives of ordinary people caught in extraordinary moments.
For your “To Read” pile: “Cold Mountain”
“Cold Mountain” tells an “Odyssey”-like tale of a wounded Confederate soldier’s perilous journey home to the woman he loves, Ada. Happening near the end of the Civil War, Inman has had enough of the bloodshed and walks away from the battlefield, determined to make the long journey back to Cold Mountain. Along the way, he encounters violence, poverty, cruelty, and people who have been changed by the war, but also unexpected acts of kindness that keep him moving toward home.
But while Inman is traveling hundreds of miles toward Ada, Ada is on her own journey. After her father dies, she is left nearly destitute and completely unprepared to manage the family farm. The story alternates between their two narratives: Inman’s is a physical journey through a devastated South, while Ada’s is a personal journey toward independence and self-discovery.
