NOTE: THIS SESSION IS FREE FOR FWR ANNUAL MEMBERS, $25 for Non-Members

For our 2026 4th Quarter Office Hours with Heather and Maggie, meet authors Kim Wright and Erika Marks. Kim and Erika both have strong track records in traditional publishing, but this year decided to try something different. Join us for Office Hours to hear how they collaborated on their new beach read Under the Boardwalk (published under the pen name Eliza Callahan) and about the creative ways they are promoting the novel. We might even send out a cocktail recipe before the Zoom so we can all dream of the beach!

Erika Marks writes women’s fiction set by the sea, among them Little Gale Gumbo, The Guest House and The Last Treasure. Her most recent novels, written as “Erika Montgomery” are A Summer to Remember and Our Place on the Island. Erika currently lives with her family in Maryland.

Kim Wright turned to fiction ten years ago after a career in journalism. Since then she has published four novels:  LOVE IN MID AIR (Grand Central), THE UNEXPECTED WALTZ, THE CANTERBURY SISTERS, and LAST RIDE TO GRACELAND (all Gallery). LAST RIDE TO GRACELAND was the 2018 winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Kim teaches at Charlotte Lit and offers developmental editing through her Story Doctor service (kimwright.org). You can find Kim on her YouTube channel GROWING BOLDER.

Maggie Marshall moved to Asheville from Los Angeles in 2006. Her first career was as a professional actress, which she spent performing on regional stages throughout the U.S., as well as Broadway, Los Angeles, and Dublin, Ireland. She then shifted into screenwriting, eventually landing in television and writing for numerous cable and syndicated one-hour drama series. She is the recipient of the Carl Sautter Memorial Screenwriting Award and a Scriptapalooza Award, both for One-Hour Drama. She has been a fiction contributor at the Tin House Writer's Workshop, a fellow at the Hambidge Creative Residency Program, a Writer-in-Residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts, and a proud member of the Flatiron Writers group. She recently completed work on a novel which is currently being shopped to publishers, and has had fiction and nonfiction pieces published in The Great Smokies Review. 

Heather Newton’s novel The Puppeteer's Daughters (Turner Publishing 2022) won the NC Indie Author Project book award for adult fiction, was a finalist for the Forword INDIES Book of the Year and has been optioned for television. Her short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House 2022), was a finalist for both the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the W.S. Porter prize. Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance as an Okra Pick (“great southern fiction fresh off the vine”). Her newest novel THE BOOK OF TEARS will be published by Regal House in the spring of 2028. She teaches for Charlotte Lit as well as the Flatiron Writers Room.