Discover writers through their published books and Forum work.
Red Dirt Press, established in 2013, is devoted to publishing emerging and established literary voices. While our literary heritage emanates from the New American South, we welcome literary submissions irrespective of region or borders.
Susan Beckham Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level to AP students. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli (Mercer University Press, March 2020; paperback edition March 2021), was selected the Gold Medal (first place) winner for Best First Book—Fiction in the 2021 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards), was a Foreword Indie Book Award finalist, a Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, a 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie 100, a 2020 finalist for American Book Fest Best Book Awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2021. Susan has won numerous awards for her short fiction, including the South Carolina Fiction Prize twice. Her second novel, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel, (Mercer University Press, 2023), has been chosen as a finalist in the American Book Fest Awards, a Shelf Unbound Notable Indie 100, and was highlighted in Kirkus Magazine, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The author lives in Spartanburg, SC.
William Bernhardt is the author of over sixty books, including the Daniel Pike legal thriller series (#1 best-selling novel The Last Chance Lawyer). His previous works include the bestselling Ben Kincaid series, the historical novels Challengers of the Dust and The Florentine Poet, three books of poetry, and the Red Sneaker books on fiction writing. In addition, Bernhardt founded WriterCon Programs to mentor aspiring writers. WriterCon hosts an annual writers conference, an annual cruise, small-group writing retreats, a magazine, plus free bi-weekly e-newsletters and podcasts. More than three dozen of Bernhardt’s students have subsequently published with major houses. He is also the president/owner of Bernhardt Books, which publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In addition to his novels and poetry, Bernhardt has written plays, a musical (book and score), humor, children stories, biography, and puzzles. He has edited two anthologies (Legal Briefs and Natural Suspect) as fundraisers for The Nature Conservancy and the Children’s Legal Defense Fund. In his spare time, he has enjoyed surfing, digging for dinosaurs, trekking through the Himalayas, paragliding, scuba diving, caving, zip-lining over the canopy of the Costa Rican rainforest, and jumping out of an airplane at 10,000 feet. In 2013, he became a Jeopardy! champion. OSU has called Bernhardt “Oklahoma’s Renaissance Man.” In 2017, when Bernhardt delivered the keynote address at the San Francisco Writers Conference, chairman Michael Larsen noted that in addition to penning novels, Bernhardt can “write a sonnet, play a sonata, plant a garden, try a lawsuit, teach a class, cook a gourmet meal, beat you at Scrabble, and work the New York Times crossword in under five minutes.”
Michael Braswell is professor emeritus from East Tennessee State University and a former prison psychologist who taught courses on ethics and justice, human relations and peacemaking. He has published books on justice issues as well as several short story collections and two novels. His poetry and fiction have been published in a variety of publications including Red Dirt Forum, Literary Heist, Foreshadow, Feed the Holy, and Mobius. His most recent books are When Jesus Came to the Cracker Barrel, Gracious Plenty and Morality Stories (5th ed.).
Erin Brown has worked as a museum curator, teacher, and is currently employed as a research administrator at Oklahoma State University. Her poetry has appeared in Oklahoma Today, Big River Review, This Land, and the Red River Review. She lives with her family in Pawnee, Oklahoma at the Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum, a historic site dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Pawnee Bill, a Wild West Showman.
Clay Cantrell's poetry has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Birdfeast, Sycamore Review, The Journal, New South, Red Truck Review, and elsewhere. His full-length collection, Hermit, Wraith, was recently a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award. He holds an MFA from University of Memphis.
Bruce Craven is an Academic Director at Columbia Business School, where he has leadership and teaching roles in executive education programs. He also teaches the MBA and EMBA management division elective: Leadership through Fiction. His non-fiction book Win or Die: Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones, was republished by Codhill Press in 2023. The book was first published by St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan) in March 2019. His most recent novel, set in NYC in the Nineties – Sweet Ride – was published by Codhill Press in 2021. He published a collection of poetry, Buena Suerte in Red Glitter, in 2019 with Red Dirt Press in Oklahoma. He adapted his first novel, Fast Sofa, to film. The movie starred Jennifer Tilly, Jake Busey and Crispin Glover. Bruce’s writing has been translated into Turkish, Serbian, Russian, German and Japanese. Bruce received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He has two BA degrees in Politics (with Honors) and English from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He lives with his wife and son in the Coachella Valley in California.
Big Ivy poet Nancy Dillingham is a sixth-generation Dillingham from the same-named community in western North Carolina. She is the author of nine books of poetry and short fiction and a fictionalized memoir. She and her co-editor Celia Miles have published four anthologies of WNC women writers. Her volume of poems Home was nominated for a Southern Independent Booksellers' Alliance award (SIBA). She lives in Asheville, NC.
Heath Dollar is the author of Waylon County: Texas Stories and Old Country Fiddle, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ 2021 Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction and was named the March 2022 Read of the Month by Southern Literary Review. Dollar, whose work has appeared in a number of publications, was also a finalist for the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story, and he won the 2018 Texas Observer Short Story Prize for “Ink Upon the Furrows.” He lives in Fort Worth.
Yasser El-Sayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and is a physician and professor at Stanford University where he specializes in high-risk obstetrics. He was a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, 2016, and his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories. His short story collection The Alexandria You Are Losing was published by Red Dirt Press in 2019, and the Arabic translation was released by the Cairo, Egypt based SEFSAFA Publishing House in 2021. “Sister in Arms” is part of a new short story collection he is developing.
Kent Frates is the nonfiction author of the award-winning book, Oklahoma’s Most Notorious Cases, and Oklahoma Courthouse Legends. A Dubious Collection, The Road Runner Press, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, features a cast of colorful characters in stories, including a penny-pinching doctor, a corrupt sheriff, a conniving politician, and other assorted characters. Frates is also a poet and attorney. He resides in Oklahoma.
Tammy Huffman lives in the rolling hills of Missouri on the family farm. Her work has appeared in Alpha, Front Porch Review, Adelaide, Literary Heist, WINK, and elsewhere.
Kasey Jones is a poet, lyricist, and librettist rooted in the red soil of rural Oklahoma. Her work has appeared across film, theater, and print, earning a World Soundtrack Award nomination. The poem “She Must Go” serves as the title track of a recently released jazz album featuring Grammy, Tony, and Oscar-winning artists. Her poetry is included in What is All This Sweet Work?. Her debut poetry collection, Tiny Night Parade: Poems from the Prairie, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.
J. M. Jordan is a Georgia native and a resident of the Old Dominion. His work has appeared in Arion, Carolina Quarterly, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Louisiana Literature, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
James Kimbrell is the author of Smote, The Gatehouse Heaven, and My Psychic and the co-translator of Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-Seon, and Choi Young Mi. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Whiting Award, the John and Renee Grisham Fellowship, the Florida Book Award, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine, and two fellowships from the NEA. A native of Mississippi, he serves as distinguished research professor at Florida State University.
David Larsen is a writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines including Cholla Needles, The Heartland Review, Floyd County Moonshine, The Mantelpiece, Oakwood, and elsewhere.
Toby LeBlanc lives in Austin, TX with his wife and children. He grew up in South Louisiana, surrounded by both prairies and swamps, English and French, as well as hot dogs and etouffee. Some of his writing can be found in Barrelhouse Magazine and Coffin Bell Journal. He is a review contributor for The Southern Review of Books. His novel, Dark Roux, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2022. Soaked, his short story collection, was released this year from Cornerstone Press.
Allen Mendenhall is a writer and attorney who serves as an associate dean of the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University.
Martina Milerova is a Czech photographer based in Texas. Her work has appeared on the cover of Waylon County: Texas Stories by Heath Dollar as well as on the covers of literary journals. She will make kolaches if she is goaded enough and loves Willie Nelson. She lives in Fort Worth.
Sarah Moore was born in Georgia, the first generation to reside on warm, flat land. Her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents come from the mountains of West Virginia. If she were to pick where it feels most like “home,” it would be this region. A graduate student and seventh grade English teacher, she also cherishes her family and two dogs, one adorable chihuahua and one pitbull.
Julia Nunnally Duncan is a Western North Carolina freelance writer, whose ten books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry explore life in a small Southern town. Her 1960s upbringing in a working class family plays a prominent role in her work. She has essays and poems appearing in current issues of Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, WNC Magazine, The Backwoodsman Magazine, World War One Illustrated, blazeVOX Journal, and Arlington Literary Journal. A new collection of essays All We Have Loved is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in November 2023. Julia lives in Marion, NC, with her husband, Steve, a mountain woodcarver. They enjoy spending time outdoors and with their daughter, Annie.
Scott Oglesby is an assistant nonfiction editor for Bellevue Literary Review (BLR). A NYC transplant from Louisiana, his varied work history includes stints as a disability analyst, actor, singer, photographer, teacher, homemaker, and café-owner, along with other sketchy side-gigs, all before publishing his first novel, Riding High (ridinghigh.net). He has also written nonfiction and humor columns for Manhattan weeklies: West Side Spirit, The Villager, and Village Sun. The literary review, Gravel, published his story, Divorcing Rhonda, and his essay, The Best That Love Could, was also produced as a podcast. His critique of David Amram’s book, Upbeat, appeared in American Book Review; Outpost19 published his short memoir, Summer Job, in their 2023 anthology, Rooted 2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction. Currently, he’s working on his memoir, Telling Dixie Goodbye.
Philip Raisor is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and criticism, as well as numerous scholarly articles, essays, reviews, and interviews in such journals as The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, The Writer's Chronicle, Studies in English Literature, and Contemporary Literature. In his teen years, he played on the losing team in the state championship game in Indiana that inspired Hoosiers, and was a freshman on the team with Wilt Chamberlain that lost a national championship in triple-overtime. Raisor received his B.A and M.A from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. from Kent State, where he was active in the protest movements of the 60's. He taught at various universities and is now professor emeritus of English at Old Dominion University, where he initiated the creative writing program, a visiting writers series, and the annual literary festival.
Larry D. Thomas, the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, has published twenty-five print poetry books and numerous poetry chapbooks both in print and online. Buttonhook Press and Hot Button Press (Open: Journal of Arts & Letters) have published online three of his recent chapbooks and four of his pamphlets, the most recent of which is his chapbook, Singing a Hymn to the Sea: Poems of the Gulf Coast.
Yurii Tokar was born in 1967 in the Soviet Union. He graduated from Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1988 and began teaching mathematics and physics in the region affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Yurii Tokar’s stories, essays, and poems have been published in newspapers and magazines in several countries, including Ukrainian, German, and American. For example, his work has appeared in the Russian-language magazine “Чайка” (Washington).
Adam Van Winkle was born and raised in Texoma on both sides of the Oklahoma-Texas border and currently resides with his wife and two sons in South Carolina. His writing has appeared in places like Bull Men's Fiction, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature , Red Dirt Forum, Cheap Pop!, Crack the Spine, Vignette Review, Steel Toe Review, Dirty Chai, and Pithead Chapel. His debut novel, Abraham Anyhow, was published by Red Dirt Press in March 2017 and selected by The Southern Literary Review as the June 2017 Read of the Month and featured in Monkeybicycle's If My Book series in July 2017. An excerpt of the novel has also received a Pushcart Nomination. Its style has been compared to the likes of John Steinbeck and Billie Letts and Donald Ray Pollock among others. His second novel, While They were in the Field was released by Red Dirt Press in January 2019. In September 2019, his novella about wrestlers and some kids in a small town for an indie wrestling show one Fall night in 1997 called HARDWAY JUICE was published. In 2020 he published The Red Knife Plays, plays adapted from the Appalachian gothic fiction of Sheldon Lee Compton, and an original 3-act play about retired wrestlers in a nursing home, Two Eunices. In Summer of 2015 he founded Cowboy Jamboree Magazine, named for the cowboy end of workday campfire song tradition to publish and promote gritty rural and rough hewn stories influenced by the likes of Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, Bobbie Ann Mason, Dorothy Allison, and Donald Ray Pollock among others. Cowboy Jamboree issues now receive thousands of readers. Since 2019, Van Winkle has been lead designer and editor for Cowboy Jamboree Press books. Van Winkle is named for the oldest Cartwright son on Bonanza.
Abdelrehim Youssef is an Egyptian poet and translator. Born in 1975 in Alexandria, he graduated from Alexandria University in 1997. He worked as a teacher of English for twenty years before retiring in 2018 and devoting his time to translation work. He has published seven books of poetry in Egyptian Arabic and has translated over twenty books. He received the Encouragement Award of the Egyptian State for translation in 2017 for his translation of Three Studies about Morals and Virtue by Bernard Mandeville. He is married to the Egyptian writer Omayma Abdelshafy and they have one son, Yehia, who is 16 years old.
