By BROOKE J. WOOD
brooke@southwesttimes.com
In less than two years, Kristy Woodson Harvey published two novels with Penguin Random House, and has just signed a contract with Simon & Schuster to write two more.
The writer of Southern fiction will be reading from her latest novel and talking about how to get published by a major publishing house when she appears Tuesday at the Draper Mercantile.
“I never actually wanted to be a creative writer,” she admits. “I wanted to be a journalist.”
The Salisbury, N.C., native began writing a column for her local newspaper when she was only 16 years old. She later majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina and worked as a freelance journalist.
Harvey, 31, says she never did much creative writing before she penned her first novel at the age of 27. A year later, Penguin Random signed her, and last year her first novel, “Dear Carolina,” was published.
That novel was up for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, has been optioned for a film and appeared on numerous must-read lists. The novel tells the story of two Southern women and the child, Carolina, they share in common as her birth and adoptive mothers.
Published in April, Harvey’s second novel, “Lies and Other Acts of Love,” tells the story of a grandmother and granddaughter who have very different ideas about honesty, something that comes to the forefront when the younger woman encounters the family skeletons.
Harvey has been married to her husband, Will, for nine years, and together they have a 4-year-old son, also named Will. They live in Beaufort, N.C.
“I write a lot about women and female friendships and family members, and the way we help and encourage each other – and the way those influences shape our lives.”
While Harvey appreciates Southern fiction and many women novelists, she focused on multi-cultural and transnational literature while working on her master’s degree in English at East Carolina University.
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