About the Author
Award-winning novelist Sharyn McCrumb is perhaps best known for her "Ballad" novels, a series of fictionalized accounts of the history and culture of the Appalachian region of the United States. The Ballad novels include If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O; The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter; She Walks These Hills; and, most recently. The Ballad of Frankie Silver. In 1997 she won the Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature award. The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as was If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O.



A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Virginia Tech, McCrumb taught journalism before turning her attention to writing fiction full time. She has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Britain.



McCrumb has won many awards for her mystery novels, including an Edgar for 1988's Bimbos of the Death Sun. McCrumb has satirized the science fiction and fantasy community in that work and its sequel, Zombies of the Mutant Gene Pool. Her novels have been translated into over ten languages.