Tommy Hays is an acclaimed Southern writer, whose fiction grows out of his emotional connections to places he’s lived and known—Greenville, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Atlanta. His novel, The Marriage Bed, was published by Blair in March 2026. His prior novels are The Pleasure Was Mine (St. Martin’s Press 2005), In the Family Way (Random House, 1999), Sam’s Crossing (Atheneum 1992), and YA novel What I Came to Tell You (Egmont, USA 2013). He has published stories, profiles and book reviews in magazines, newspapers and literary journals such as Redbook, Our State, The Atlanta Constitution, The Charlotte Observer, Smoky Mountain Living, Still:The Journal, The Chattahoochee Review and storySouth.
In 2022, Hays was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, writers judged to have added to South Carolina’s literary legacy. In 2021 he was named to
the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina. In 2018, he received the Charlie Award at the Carolina Mountain Literary Festival, recognizing a writer who has made significant contributions as a writer and a community builder. He was a long-serving member of the Board of the North Carolina Writer’s Network and is a continuing member of National Book Critics Circle.
He is founder and retired Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville’s community writing program as well as Lecturer Emeritus in the Master of Liberal Arts program. He has taught in the Converse University Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing, the Murray State University Low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing, The South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, and The Wildacres Writer’s Workshop. He received his BA in English from Furman University and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
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