Board Chair Lucy Doll returns to the board after taking 2021 off.  She has been a LitFest board member since 2007, including six years as Author Liaison, four years as Venue Coordinator, three as Vice-Chair, with a variety of odd jobs concurrent and in between.  A dedicated Burnsville “townie,” she regards the Town Center as “Burnsville’s living room,” and has held numerous parties, fundraisers, concerts, and productions there including eight years of directing her adaptation of Ogden Nash’s “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t” as a staged reading for Read It & Weep Repertory Theatre, which she founded specifically to bring America’s “Poet Laureate of Light Verse” to young audiences of the twenty-first century. A voracious reader since the age of three, she’d rather read a book than just about anything except perhaps write an umbrage-filled Letter To The Editor about celebrity worship in politics, or snuggle with her husband and rescue dogs. Or throw another party at the Town Center. She is currently creating a bird sanctuary behind her house in downtown Burnsville.

Board Vice Chair Dr. Daniel Barron, is a 6th generation native of Mitchell County, which at one time was a part of Yancey so Toe River is home.  He graduated from Appalachian State, was a high school librarian in Gastonia, and received his MLIS, AMLIS, and Ph.D. from Florida State University.  He retired as Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina after 30 years as a researcher, faculty member, and director of the school.  He has taught using every distant delivery system available from live satellite TV in the 80s to online courses before retiring in 2006 with nearly a thousand graduates in Maine, West Virginia, Georgia, Virginia, and of course South Carolina.  He has worked with library and higher education projects in China, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Malaysia, and 37 of the 50 states.  Three weeks after retiring from USC, he accepted an Interim Directorship with the Avery Mitchell Yancey Regional Library, fell in love with the job, applied for the position, and was appointed Director in 2007 from which he retired in 2015.  He has a daughter, Amy, who is a GIS Strategist with Duke Energy in Charlotte, a stepson, Bobby, who is an electronics specialist; and a stepdaughter, Maddie, who works in hospitality services. His wife, Brette, is an artist and they live in Bakersville.  In this iteration of retirement/repurposement he claims the titles of Community Activist, Cultural Dabbler, Shade Tree Mechanic, and ¼ Inch Carpenter.  Dan worked with the first Carolina Mountains Literary Festival and the next 10  before leaving the Board.  He is very excited about rejoining this wonderful cultural and fun effort.

Board Secretary Jimette Cook’s family has been in Western North Carolina since the 1700’s. Although she grew up in Florida, the culture of Western North Carolina has always been a defining influence on her life.

Her four sons formed childhood memories of the Black Mountains with frequent visits to the area to visit family, as do her three granddaughters.

Jimette attended the University of Florida and studied Criminal Justice and Political Science. After a career in local government with an emphasis on enforcing environmental regulations and serving as Arborist for various local jurisdictions, Jimette relocated full time to Yancey County.  She updated the original log home built by her great grandfather and shares the home with her lazy dog, Jake.

A lifelong love of education led Jimette to Mayland Community College, where she served as Director of Mayland Enterprise Corporation, and Student Success Specialist on the educational staff of the Pre-college Department of Mayland  working with the adult Intellectually-challenged community. Sharing a love of books and reading has been a rewarding element of her work with students.  

Board Member, Author Hospitality Coordinator Jada Cash has called Yancey County home for the past twenty years, always in awe of these beautiful Black Mountains and how lucky she is to have them in her back yard.  She is retired from a thirty-year career as a registered nurse in roles of cardiology, intensive care, home health, adjunct college instructor, hospice, and most recently spending summers with kids as a camp nurse at Camp Celo.  Jada began volunteering with the CMLF about 10 years ago as a session coordinator. She went on to writing press releases, helping with the festival banquets and author lounge, assisting with coordinating author presentations at Yancey elementary schools – generally doing whatever Lucy or Kathy asked her to.  Most recently she assumed the role of Author Hospitality Coordinator.  Jada had grown up looking forward to visiting the library every week with her very own library card and book bag, and attending weekly story hour. What a joy it was to bring her own daughter to Monday story hours at the Yancey Library!  She still enjoys hours of reading and being read to.  Jada also enjoys hiking, community projects, local land conservation efforts, friends, book clubs, live music, writing, ceramics, and romps to the river with her canine friends.

Board Member, Volunteer Coordinator Blye McSweeney and her husband, Artie Chesnut, relocated from Florida to Burnsville in late 2020. While adjusting to cooler temps, honing her pickleball skills, and benignly looking for an opportunity to become involved in the local community, she met Lucy Doll at a fundraiser at Homeplace Beer Company during the summer of 2022.  And so ensued a conversation where they bonded over a wide range of subjects to include a mutual affection for dogs and a shared interest in philanthropic activism.  Blye’s love of reading most likely had its origins when she learned to appreciate the written (and spoken) word from her paternal grandmother who took her to the local library and read her stories about Abraham Lincoln.  Of note: Blye’s grandmother lived two doors down from Lincoln’s historic family home in Springfield, Illinois.  What began as a childhood interest in reading about our 16th president continues today via a lifelong love of reading – a legacy she has proudly passed to her children and grandchildren. Next stop, 10 years of teaching high school English (BA, English and Art History), followed by a seismic career shift to the Executive Search/Recruitment industry where she ultimately oversaw operations in several Southern California locations.  Today, Blye looks forward to the opportunity to merge her love of all things literary with her people management skills in aiding the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in reaching its goals.  And she thanks Lucy (and her feisty dog, Fang) for a fortuitous meeting at a small-town brewery on a summer evening and the beginning of a new adventure.

Board Member, Program Committee  Amber Westall Briggs is the Regional Library Director for Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey Counties.  Most days she is surrounded by book talks and every new idea under the sun.  After Amber’s parents had a wild hair to return to the original Westall cabin (built in 1856), the family packed up and left their home in Raleigh to go back to the mountains where her parents were raised.  Amber grew up in Celo, seconds from South Toe River in a 900 square foot log cabin (the cabin where Thomas Wolfe wrote about her great-great grandfather- his uncle).  Her childhood was spent listening to stories told at her grandmother’s general store, playing in creeks, running through the woods, and devouring books daily.  She holds degrees in Literature and Library Science and is certified as a NC Public Librarian by the State Library of North Carolina.  Amber has actively served in several region and state-wide library and literary collaborations. Currently, she is a member of the North Carolina Public Library Directors Association; at the state level, she volunteers as a Committee Member of The State Library Continuing Education Committee, The State Library Youth Services Advisory Committee, and The Broadband Initiative Advisory Committee. Locally, she has served or continues to serve on many nonprofit boards.  Much like her parents, she and her husband, Shane, moved back to WNC.  They raise their 3 children here.  She says “each day my children have with their grandparents is a tremendous gift, and having a profession in a rural area such as ours gives me a firsthand look at how libraries impact my neighbors and community members.”  She still treasures listening to stories, plays in dirt every chance she gets, jumps in freezing cold rivers and deep sighs at these mountains.

Board Member at Large Born in the Appalachians and exiled for a time to Georgia, Laurin Blanks has been a college and high school English instructor for twenty years.  She writes poetry and short stories and has been at work for years on a most elusive novel.  When she’s not tap dancing in front of a classroom, she enjoys herding cats and wandering the pathless wilds in search of the perfect trout stream. 

Board Member at Large Eliza Millard and her husband Steve moved to Asheville, NC in 1978.  She wore several hats while they raised their two children.  She was a baker and soup maker at a worker-owned restaurant called Stone Soup.  When Steve started an advertising and design agency in the mid 80’s, she became the general office manager and media buyer for Millard Design.  As computers began to take over many of her responsibilities at the agency, she found a job in the Early Head Start Preschool program with Asheville City Schools, where she worked for ten years before retiring.  Her love for reading began as a child and has never ceased.  Literature is a window into other worlds, lives and cultures and, she believes, the foundation of sound knowledge.  They now live in Celo, Yancey County where they still have a few loyal clients and Eliza works part time in the M.A.G.I.C. after-school program at South Toe River Elementary.  She is honored to have been asked to join the board of the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival.

Board Member at Large Born in Corbin, Kentucky in 1949, Ronni Lundy has worked professionally in publishing for over 40 years as a journalist, editor, editorial consultant, book and music reviewer, and author of 10 books. Most recently she has become the owner and bookseller at Plott Hound Books in downtown Burnsville. Her work means that she must be cognizant not only of best sellers and new releases, but of the types of books that are most appreciated by readers in our region. Her heritage as a sixth generation Appalachian has given her a deep personal commitment to sourcing actual Southern Mountain voices, stories, and histories that complicate and challenge the stereotypes that have been too long foisted on the region. In her collaborations with colleagues, mentorship with younger writers, and advising to both university and commercial publishers she has evidenced her commitment to broadly diversifying the voices in our public discourse.