Contemporary romance novelist Deborah Smith is a former newspaper editor. She writes under her own name as well as under the pseudonyms Jackie Leigh and Jacqueline Lennox. She has written around forty novels indcluding A Place to Call Home and When Venus Fell, which both received awards from Romantic Times magazine. She also won a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine. She is a founding partner of BelleBooks, which is a small southern press known for feel good southern fiction including the Mossy Creek Hometown series and the Sweet Tea story collections.
Sarah Addison Allen was born in Asheville, North Carolina and received a bachelor's degree in literature. Her first book, Garden Spells, was published in 2007. Her other works include The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, which became a New York Times bestseller in 2015, The Peach Keeper, Lost Lake, and First Frost.