Susan Gregg Gilmore

Susan Gregg Gilmore was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1961. She began her writing career at the University of Virginia as a reporter for the school’s award-winning newspaper, The Cavalier Daily.

After graduating with a degree in history, she assumed a secretarial position with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. A year later, Gregg Gilmore entered graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a Master of Arts in American Studies.

She married in 1985 and with her husband, Dan, raised three daughters all the while writing for newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the Chattanooga News-Free Press.

While on staff at the Free Press, Gregg Gilmore wrote a weekly column about parenting in the South.

Her first novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, is rooted in summer vacations spent with her paternal grandmother and grandfather, a revival-bred preacher, who after church on Sundays, always took his granddaughters to the Dairy Queen.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown/2008) was called a “stand-out coming of age novel” by NPR’s Alan Cheuse and was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) 2009 Book Award Nominee.

Her second novel, The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown/2010), also reviewed on National Public Radio, was named a 2010 SIBA Summer OKRA Pick and selected as part of TARGET’s Emerging Author Program.

Gilmore currently lives in Chattanooga with her family and two dogs.

For more about Susan and her works, go to http://www.susangregggilmore.com/