Peggy Poe Stern, writes novels steeped with Appalachia.
A worker and a listener, Peggy grew up in a remote hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Northwest North Carolina, and has spent most every day of her life absorbed in some type of farm work. Her heritage shows from head to toe: in her tough, work-worn hands, and in the easy, flowing cadence of her mountain voice. Always curious, she wants to know everyone's story and has a knack of getting it: from the old timers of her childhood to all the other people she has come across since, from laborers to affluent developers.
One cannot encounter Peggy without swapping jokes and sharing stories. Many of her stories have roots in her own experiences:
Her dad grew beans and raised livestock. Her mother worked at a local factory to supplement the farming income. Relatives, extended family, and church provided a unique atmosphere for living and learning the old mountain traditions. She married at seventeen, finished high school, and started a family.
She furthered her education at Appalachian State, but the responsibilities of six children quickly made formal study impossible. She did manage to write a few manuscripts on an old portable typewriter. Her husband teased about her spelling and sentence structure, causing her to become somewhat disillusioned with writing. She turned to crafts to assist with the family expenses, marketing her crafts through Blue Ridge Hearthside Crafts Cooperative of which she became became a board member.
Moving to her own farm, she continued to raise her own food, adding a milk cow and other livestock. Initially tobacco was the main cash crop. Christmas trees were planted to assist the children through college. Being active in agriculture, Peggy became a board member of Farm Bureau Insurance, the local Christmas Tree Association, NC Agricultural Extension Advisory Council, and NC State University. These positions enabled her to experience some of the life beyond the mountains.
For more than thirty years, Peggy assisted her husband, a land surveyor, with the field and office work. Through contacts made with a developer client, she started selling her Christmas trees on a lot in Naples, Florida, becoming known there as the "The Christmas Tree Lady". The survey business gave Peggy additional insight on the impacts to the community, good and bad, as the mountains became a tourist and second home destination.
As her six children grew up, went to college, married and had families of their own, there became time for writing. Wanting to know if she was good enough to write seriously, she attended many classes, audited some graduate level courses, and joined a local writers group. During a luncheon, Terry Kay told her "All words are the same. It's how you use them that makes the difference". He also advised her to write something that wasn't personal. Taking Terry's advice, in 2003 Peggy wrote her first novel, Heaven-High and Hell-deep, which resonates with her poignant voice and storytelling ability.
Always resourceful, Peggy decided if she could write a book, surely she could publish it herself. So she bought some used equipment from ebay, then learned to print and bind her own books. Consequently, every book is homemade: she writes the stories, paints the cover picture, then prints and binds the paperbacks at the farmhouse she built on Moody Mill Creek flowing from Grandfather Mountain.
The local newspaper, Avery Post, serialized Heaven-High and Hell-deep plus its sequel Above All.
Whether from her experiences, shared stories, or from the spirits of the past; characters keep evolving in Peggy's imagination. Then they nag her until she relates their story. Often she is working on seven or eight novels simultaneously, completing one for the character that becomes the most persistent. They just have to deal with Peggy casting their stories in her beloved mountains.
Peggy has brewed up a heirloom collection of novels steeped with Appalachian characters and settings:
1. Heaven-high and Hell-deep, Laine's Beech Mountain Story, Book 1
2. Tamarack
3. When Robins Weep
4. Hills of Home
5. A perfect Man is Hard to Find
6. Mountain Splendor
7. Blood Moon Rising
8. Wild Thing, A sequel to Wild Thing
9. Above All, Laine's Beech Mountain Story, Book 2
10. Joppa
11. Thunder Hole
12. An Honorable Man
13. Running Wild
14. Dream Lover
15. Blood Kin
16. Blind Faith
17. Served Cold
18. Better Off Dead
19. Better Off Gone
20. Old Barns of Ashe
21. Wanted
22. Mountain Gorilla, Laine's Beech Mountain Story, Book 3
23. The Rising Sun
24. Sweet Lendy
25. Last of the Summer Wine
26. What in Sam Hill
27. Jonas Jones, Laine's Beech Mountain Story, Book 4
28. Setup
29. Searching
30. A Broken Lady
31. Granny's Will
32. Mountain Pearl
33. Scent of a Man
She has published four non-fiction mountain guidebooks
101. Mountain Talk
102. To Everything There is a Season
103. Hunting the Haunted
104. Hard Nosed Advice on Novel Writing
and started on some Mountain Tales
201 Buck from Staggs Creek
