Kristy Woodson Harvey’s Summer of Songbirds (2023) will be a nostalgic retreat for your mind, dreaming of days by the lake during the hottest time of the year.  For those who spent part of their youth at summer camp, and for the rest who wish they had, Harvey’s story of the love and potential loss of a special place and time will take you there.  She worried about camps closing down during COVID and not being able to stay afloat for future generations.  In doing so, she reminisced about her own exciting time as a camper.  In her previous book, The Wedding Veil (2022), Camp Holly Springs made a cameo in fond memories of days gone by for reunited sweethearts, and in Songbirds its future is now in jeopardy. 

The Wedding Veil was her first venture into historical fiction and is a parallel story about two families - one a typical American family with trials and celebrations who face internal struggles with family relationships, and the other with similar circumstances on a much grander and more public scale because of their name - Vanderbilt.  One treasured item connects them all, and readers are taken on an adventure both past and present as we discover, along with the strong female leads, just what the veil means to each of them. 

 She attributes much of her ability to complete The Wedding Veil to librarians, who fact-checked and shared information with her during the difficult shutdown when she couldn’t get out and research material for the book herself.  Working with the head librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill, Harvey’s alma mater, she learned how to do archival research online regarding the Vanderbilt family.  She says that libraries have supported her career since the beginning by hosting book signing events to help promote her latest release.  As a child she visited the library every week where the librarian helped her find what she liked, and she still loves to spend time there.  In her own small-town-meets-royalty storyline, Harvey tells of a reader from Salisbury who shipped all of KWH’s books to the Queen Consort, Camilla, for her reading room.  Much to their surprise, a photo in the May 2023 issue of British Vogue shows Camilla seated in her study with a copy of Under the Southern Sky (2021) in her hands. 

 Another outcome of her shelter-at-home time was the instantly popular Friends & Fiction on Facebook Live, which she still hosts with fellow bestselling authors Mary Alice Monroe, Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, and Patti Callahan Henry.  They all had books coming out in 2020 but had to cancel book tours, which they knew was also disheartening to independent bookstores whose sales were quickly diminishing.  The writers decided to celebrate their books and these cherished booksellers by way of a live chat and invited fans to join them, never imagining that over 1,000 would attend on the first night.  The women take turns writing the script for the hour-long virtual gathering, have gained over 160,000 followers, and have hosted 175 episodes to date.  Harvey considers these women as mentors and finds reassurance of her self-doubt through their transparency about the insecurities they also face as writers.

 Harvey was born in Pinehurst and grew up in Salisbury, where she began her career as a journalist for The Salisbury Post under the guidance of its award-winning editor at the time, Rose Post, whose old columns she read for inspiration.  Now an author of contemporary fiction, Harvey hopes readers choose her books to escape and connect with the characters in a way that allows them a deeper understanding of themselves.  She writes about places she wants to go and people she wants to talk to, and her accolades show that she has numerous like-minded fans.  A New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today bestselling author, recipient of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of NC, and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, she just completed another book that will be published in the spring of 2024. 

 In the meantime, her focus is geared towards the small screen as the co-writer and co-executive producer of an NBC series based on her Peachtree Bluff books.  Coincidentally, the producer who first contacted Harvey to discuss transporting her characters from the page to real life grew up in New Bern, which is just down the road from Beaufort, the Inner Banks town where the series is based.   When asked why she thinks NC is the literary home of so many authors, Harvey says the South has so many unique characters and ways of life, and that storytelling is so common in families and their communities.  She also thinks the natural beauty in North Carolina is a draw, oftentimes becoming a character in its own right within the story.  She specifically remembers family trips to the coast as a child in which her father told stories during the long car ride.  She credits her love of reading in part to great NC writers such as Lee Smith, whose work she read while working towards her journalism degree.

 Summer of Songbirds will be released July 11th.  Pre-order your copy and one for a friend from your favorite independent bookseller.  You don’t have to wait to read The Wedding Veil or Kristy’s other best-selling books - step into the Given Tufts Bookshop or Given Memorial Library to see what’s available today! More information about Kristy, including her blog, podcast, newsletter and upcoming tour, can be found at www.kristywoodsonharvey.com