Sharyn McCrumb, New York Times Bestselling Author

Sharyn Selected as 2008

Virginia Women in History Honoree
The Library of Virginia has announced that Sharyn McCrumb has been named one of Virginia's eight Women of History for 2008. This honor, designed to recognize and honor the achievements of women who have made important contributions to Virginia and America, both past and present, is celebrated at a reception in Richmond on March 27th at the Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad Street.

Sharyn McCrumb, 2008 Virginia Women in History honoree.

Sharyn McCrumb, 2008 Virginia Women in History honoree.

Sharyn McCrumb is being recognized for her achievements in literature as a New-York Times best-selling Appalachian writer, who won the 2006 Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award and the AWA Book of the Year Award for her NASCAR-themed novel St. Dale. McCrumb’s other honors include: the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature given by the East Tennessee Historical Society; AWA Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award; the Chaffin Award for Achievement in Southern Literature; the Plattner Award for Short Story; and AWA’s Best Appalachian Novel. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received her M.A. in English from Virginia Tech.

She was the first writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee. In 2001 she served as fiction writer-in-residence at the WICE Conference in Paris, and in 2005 she was honored as the writer of the year at the annual literary celebration at Emory and Henry College. Sharyn McCrumb has lectured on her work at Oxford University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Bonn, Germany, and at universities and libraries throughout the country.

The seven other Women in History for this year are: Frances Culpeper Stevens Berkeley Ludwell, a colonial leader of the Green Spring Faction; Edith Turner, 18th century chief of the Nottoway; 19th century civic leader Lucy Goode Brooks; Dale City community activist Providencia Velasquez Gonzalez; Isabel Wood Rogers, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA); acclaimed artist Patricia Buckley Moss; and VA Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bermingham Lacy. View a poster depicting the 2008 Virginia Women in History. To request a free poster, go to the Library of Virginia web site.

In addition to the formal recognition at the March 27 reception, the honorees are also featured in a traveling exhibition available to Virginia libraries and schools free of charge.

For more information visit the Library of Virginia's web site. Read an article about the honor at OurValley.org.

Ohio River Festival of Books
Sharyn appeared again this year at the Ohio River Festival of Books. Read about the event.

Buckle Up, Bristol
Sharyn spoke during East Tennessee University’s NASCAR Experience program. Read more.

About the Author and her Novels:
The Devil is in the Details
"The Luncheon," featured in Sharyn McCrumb's short story anthology Foggy Mountain Breakdown (Ballantine Books), is a quiet little story about a meek university employee having lunch with her two obnoxious co-workers, but the story also makes a powerful statement about environmental issues in Appalachia.

Southwest Virginia English teacher Cathy Spence analyzes the symbolism in "The Luncheon" in a new essay callled "The Devil in the Details."
(more)

Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains:
A Guidebook
Got the late winter blues or suffering from cabin fever? Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook, by Georgann Eubanks, is a 432-page illustrated guidebook featuring 18 tours, as well as detailed driving instructions, maps and color photographs that will make it easy for you to get on the road this spring and experience North Carolina through the eyes of some of North Carolina’s best writers. Several of the locations listed are featured in Sharyn's Ballad novels and referenced in this edition.

Once Around The Track - In Stores Now!

Once Around The Track, a new novel by Sharyn McCrumb. In stores now.

Having written the award-winning NASCAR novel St. Dale, I find that it's pretty hard to get the leaded gas out of your system, but I am now working on a new book set in the Appalachian mountains. I enjoyed my detour into NASCAR, though. After spending my adolescence writing term papers and avoiding any and all jocks and proms, I am now hanging out with race car drivers, and it is glorious to finally have adventures on this side of the computer monitor.

Once Around the Track chronicles the adventures of an all-woman NASCAR team that hires a "pretty" male driver. I was interested in all the different ways the "pretty male driver" is perceived by the other characters. Skinny boys in firesuits look like warrior angels, and one tends to expect them to be kinder, wiser, braver, etc. than they could possibly be. It was an interesting way for me to structure to look at our need for larger-than-life heroes.

I hope I can convey that in the book: the different ways that the driver, Badger Jenkins, is perceived by the other characters. At one point Badger says, "I am the blank screen on which everybody runs their own movie."


	Adam Edwards and Sharyn.

Researching the book was quite an adventure. My literary crew chief was my friend, ARCA driver Adam Edwards. During the year that I wrote the novel, Adam was getting his MBA at Virginia Tech, and he handled my most arcane questions with wisdom and patience.

In December 2005, Adam and I lived the scene in the novel in which Taran takes photos of Tony Lafon in his fire suit in Victory Lane at Daytona, and last July 2006, while he was an instructor for FastTrack racing, he gave me my first ride-along in a race car at Lowes Motor Speedway. As his ARCA schedule permits, Adam will be doing some of the appearances with me this summer for Once Around the Track. (Please direct all technical questions to him.)

2002 Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton, who was "my driver" in NASCAR before he became my friend, is the soul of this book. Without him, the novel would not exist. He swears that he does not remember receiving (and refusing) an offer in 2005 to drive for an all-female team, but that is where this story began-- not as a formal book project, but as a jeu d’esprit via e-mail to amuse Ward’s posse. I wrote part of the first chapter in the hospital with an IV needle in my hand, laughing hysterically. Before I sent the manuscript off for publication, I read him sections of the book for his approval, since Badger owes a great deal of his imaginary DNA to Ward. I was so terrified at the prospect of letting him hear it that I don't think my hands stopped shaking until he started to laugh.


Ward Burton and Sharyn. Photo by Joe Hensley.

Ward, who holds the track qualifying record at Darlington, helped to write the chapter set at the race there. I'm fascinated by the whole mystique of drivers-- the fact that putting on the firesuit seems to make them someone different-- the "Spider Man" effect, I guess. When I talked to Ward, sometimes I actually specified whether I wanted to talk to the little guy who is my friend or to his racing avatar, whom I jokingly refer to as the Angel of Death. He answers to both.

I consulted the Pettys and the Earnhardts on the fine points of creative engineering and NASCAR lore, and a NASCAR gas-man and an automotive engineer helped out with the technical side of the research. This may be the first book ever to have a pit crew to make sure I got everything right.

But what really interested me in this story was that feeling of awe that fans have for their driver, and the mythology they create about a man who is a stranger to them. In some ways this book is as much about religion as St. Dale was. Once Around the Track is not really a sports book. It’s about our need for heroes and our tendency to build souls for people because we need to believe in something greater than ourselves.

Order your autographed copy of Once Around the Track today!

Hollywood Comes to the Blue Ridge
Sharyn McCrumb's Day with the Producer and Director

"On January 25th, I spent a delightful day playing tour guide in the snow to producer Rebecca Tudor-Foley of Lizcat Films and Roberto Schaefer, a director from Hollywood. They are making a movie of my novel The Rosewood Casket, and they were scouting locations around Asheville and in southwest Virginia.


	Director Roberto Schaefer checking out a house on Rt. 42 just past Newport.

Roberto Schaefer, who is making his directorial debut on The Rosewood Casket, was nominated for a British Academy Award for cinematography for the Johnny Depp movie Finding Neverland, and he worked as cinematographer on Monsters Ball with Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton. He just got back from China where he was filming The Kite Runner.

Playing tour guide for them was a joy. I was fully prepared to be polite and humble before Jon Lovitz in a velvet smoking jacket and Foster Grants, but the first thing Roberto said to me was, "I hear you're into NASCAR. I'm a Formula One guy, and I used to film road race courses." Be still my heart.

So we talked about Juan Montoya going into Cup racing, and I told him about my ridealong in a race car last summer at Lowes Motor Speedway. We had a great time. It's probably a good thing he did have professional driving experience, because we spent all day zipping over steep mountain roads in the snow in a four-wheel drive. In order to take them to lunch in Paint Bank, in the restaurant that has a swinging bridge and a trout stream inside it, we had to cross a very high icy mountain, where one skid would have meant that we would become not only history but geography.

On Rt. 42 in Craig County, I showed them the old farmhouse that — in my imagination — really was the Stargill farmstead in The Rosewood Casket, and New Castle, Virginia looks the way I always pictured Hamelin in the Ballad novels. So they have now seen the movie-in-my-head.

We did talk about casting, and they are considering some impressive actors for this movie — which I probably shouldn't mention, because nothing is set in stone, yet, but they hope to finish the film this year. That's all I really know at this point. But showing them around was a wonderful adventure, and I hope they choose to shoot the film here in Virginia."

- Sharyn McCrumb

Recent Articles by Sharyn McCrumb
A Possum Drop? The Carolina mountain community of Brasstown has evolved a unique New Year's Eve celebration that incorporates Appalachian traditions, humor, and music with some high tech innovations. Sharyn McCrumb and the Cosmic Possum, poet Jane Hicks, rang in 2008 at this unique event.

A North Carolina twist on a New Year's Eve tradition, from Blue Ridge Country Magazine, November/December 2007. Download article. (pdf file)

When Virginia Tech decided in 2006 to produce a new coffee table book celebrating the architectural beauty of the VPI campus, they asked two distinguished alumni to write introductions to the book. Homer Hickam, whose acclaimed novel The Rocket Boys was made into the wonderful film October Sky represented Science and Engineering, and Sharyn McCrumb, who has an M.A. in English from Virginia Tech, wrote the introduction for Arts & Sciences. The book is called Cut in Stone. Visit their web site for information and to order your copy.

When Mountain Homes Magazine asked Sharyn McCrumb to write an essay about some aspect of Appalachian living, she thought of the apple-butter making tradition of the local Ruritan club of which her husband is a member. This led into a meditation on the traditional varieties of pre-20th century apples, species still being preserved and cultivated by Urban Homestead, a small family-run orchard in Bristol, VA.

Sharyn has some of their trees growing on her farm, as a wonderful way to keep the past alive, and she highly recommends the Urban Homestead catalog and web-site description of apple varieties, which is an education in itself.

Sharyn's article Comfort Me With Apples was published in the Winter 2007 issue of Mountain Homes Magazine. Download article. (pdf file)

In the summer of 2006 on assignment from Blue Ridge Country Magazine, Sharyn McCrumb and an old pal from grade school met in Wilkes County, North Carolina and spent the day on the trail of legendary mountain murderer Tom Dula, made famous by the folk song "Hang Down your Head, Tom Dooley." Sharyn and David visited the graves, the scenes in case, the site of the hanging in Statesville, and they spent the day trying to figure out what really happened to Laura Foster on May 25, 1866. Read the article on the Blue Ridge Country Magazine web site.)

Note: The lawyer who defended Tom Dula was former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, the main character of Sharyn McCrumb's novel Ghost Riders. The case is discussed on page 308 in the hardcover.

In Press: New Short Stories by Sharyn McCrumb
Will Be Featured in the Following Forthcoming Publications
Appalachian Heritage Magazine - Spring 2008.
"Hands Across the Ridge." A short story satirizing Appalachian stereotyping through the eyes of a visiting Appalachian scholar, who keeps getting asked patronizing questions by clueless people at a reception in his honor. (more)

Inspired By Poe, Edited by Ellen Datlow - Solaris Press, 2008.
A short story anthology in tribute to the centennial of Edgar Allan Poe.
"The Mountain House." The widow of a NASCAR driver retreats to her north Georgia vacation home, and finds that it is indeed "close to heaven."

Blood Lite, An anthology of short stories edited by Kevin J. Anderson - Pocket Books, 2008.
"Dead Hand." "You can do NASCAR," said Sharyn's friend, the best-selling science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson, who was putting together anthology of humorous, spooky stories. She couldn't resist it. What followed (with a little help from a couple of NASCAR drivers) was the story of a struggling racing team who used a little Cherokee magic to help them compete against the rich and powerful teams in NASCAR.

We invite you to visit our online shop for your copies of Sharyn's novels, CDs of original and historic ballads and readings by the author, our tote bag, posters and cassettes of the Legends. You can shop confidently and securely with your Visa or MasterCard.

Author Sharyn McCrumb. Photo by Tim Johnson, Living Images Photography

Author Sharyn McCrumb. Photo by Tim Johnson, Living Images Photography

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