Prompt to Page Authors

These authors have appeared on the Prompt to Page writing podcast!

Each month, a JCPL librarian interviews a published writer about their favorite writing prompt. Whether you’re just getting started or have written for years, you’ll find ideas and advice to inspire you and help you become a better writer.

Updated November 12, 2025
Jessamine County Public Library
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\"In her powerful debut, Kristina Erny questions whether sustenance will come in the desert places in her faith and what it might mean to journey forward anyway. In meditations set within imagery in 1 Kings, Erny borrows the voices of long-dead prophets, widows, and ravens to explore her own contemporary faith-life, becoming the angel nudging herself forward. Everyday human moments of grief, longing, desire, and doubt sit alongside celebrations of simple life.\"

Tell Me What You See
Terena Elizabeth Bell
Paper Book
Tell Me What You See is a collection of ten experimental short stories about coronavirus quarantines, climate change, the January 6th invasion on the US Capitol, and other events from 2020-2021. Written in both word and image, pieces from the collection have been called "&...
I loved you in another life
Arnold, David
Paper Book
A USA Today bestseller! A poignant love story about two teens whose souls come together time and again through the ages--for fans of Nina LaCour and Matt Haig. Evan Taft has plans. Take a gap year in Alaska, make sure his little brother and single mother...
Mosquitoland
Arnold, David
Paper Book
"Top-notch" --USA Today "Illuminating" --Washington Post "A breath of fresh air" --Entertainment Weekly "Memorable" --People   After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in...
Painted Daydreams
Beck, Elizabeth
Ebook
Every bone a prayer
Blooms, Ashley
Paper Book
"Blooms has taken the voice and names of Appalachia, tended, and evolved them, and created a book that is at once haunting and hopeful."--NPR Praised by BuzzFeed, Good Housekeeping, POPSUGAR, Bustle, and more! Misty's holler looks like any of the thousands of hollers that fork...
Where I can't follow : a novel
Blooms, Ashley
Paper Book
"Haunting and hopeful...a magic so vivid it feels more like a memory than a work of fiction."--Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Once and Future Witches NAMED A MOST-ANTICIPATED BOOK BY Good Housekeeping, Gizmodo, Den of Geek, Tor.com, and more! Walk through...
Mr. & Mrs. Witch : a novel
Bond, Gwenda
Paper Book
In Mr. & Mrs. Witch, the next novel from bestselling author Gwenda Bond, a couple discovers at the altar the surprising secret identities they've kept from each other. Savannah Wilde is a witch, a very powerful one--an identity that only her fellow witches know....
Suspicious minds
Bond, Gwenda
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * If you think you know the truth behind Dr. Brenner's experiments at Hawkins Laboratory, prepare to have your mind turned Upside Down in the first official Stranger Things novel--"the prequel story that fans have been waiting for" (Kirkus Reviews<...
Breakfast Served Anytime
Combs, Sarah.
Ebook
A coming-of-age debut evokes the bittersweet joys and pangs of finding independence in one unforgettable summer away at "geek camp." When Gloria sets out to spend the summer before her senior year at a camp for gifted and talented students, she doesn't know quite what to...
Martians don't take temperatures
Dadey, Debbie.
Paper Book
The Bailey School kids are suspicious of the new school nurse, whose bright green bandages seem to have an instant healing effect.
Mermaids don't run track
Dadey, Debbie.
Paper Book
The running coach at Camp Lone Wolf is a beautiful woman who looks just like the mermaid the kids have seen in a picture. Will the campers run across the truth as they practise for the big running race?
True Ghost Stories and Eerie Legends from America's Most Haunted Neighborhood
Domine, David
Paper Book
The most haunted neighborhood in America? That's what many are calling Old Louisville, an extensive preservation district with hundreds of old mansions and beautiful homes in Kentucky's largest city. Wherever you go in this eye-popping neighborhood, it seems that a haunted house is not far away. Or...
A dark room in Glitter Ball City : murder, secrets, and scandal in Old Louisville
Dominé, David
Paper Book
This true crime saga--with an eccentric Southern backdrop--introduces the reader to the story of a murder in a crumbling Louisville mansion and the decades of secrets and corruption that live within the old house's walls. On June 18, 2010, police discover a body buried in the...
The Bearable Slant of Light
Edwards, Lynnell
Paper Book
The Bearable Slant of Light asks what the burden and gift of madness brings to a family, to our world. What can we bear and what can we lift when a beloved, when our world, is light-struck and mad? The Bearable Slant of Light documents a web of clinical assessments, medications, the...
The real Riley Mayes
Elliott, Rachel
Paper Book
A Stonewall Book Award Honor * A Sid Fleishman Humor Award Honor Funny and full of heart, this debut graphic novel is a story about friendship, identity, and embracing all the parts of yourself that make you special.   Fifth grade is just not Riley's vibe....
Weedeater : an illustrated novel
Gipe, Robert
Paper Book
A finalist for the 2019 Weatherford Award in Fiction, Weedeater  is a contemporary story of love and loss told by a pair of eastern Kentucky mountaineers: Gene, the lovelorn landscaper who bears witness to the misadventures of a family entangled in drugs, artmaking, and politics, a...
Trampoline : an illustrated novel
Gipe, Robert.
Paper Book
Dawn Jewell is fifteen. She is restless, curious, and wry. She listens to Black Flag, speaks her mind, and joins her grandmother's fight against mountaintop removal mining almost in spite of herself. "I write by ear," says Robert Gipe, and Dawn's voice is the essence of his debut novel,...
Who we lost : a portable COVID memorial
Greenwald, Martha (Poet)
Paper Book
Who We Lost is the first book that directly acknowledges the free-floating grief of the COVID-bereaved, affirms that it must be addressed, and offers a purposeful activity that respects mourners as well as the mourned.  In 2020, Martha Greenwald invited mourners to...
Swiss vendetta
De Hahn, Tracee
Paper Book
Swiss Vendetta, Tracee de Hahn's mesmerizing debut, is an emotionally complex, brilliantly plotted mystery set against the beautiful but harsh backdrop of a Swiss winter. Inspector Agnes Lüthi, a Swiss-American police officer in Lausanne, Switzerland, has just...
The magnetic girl : a novel
Handler, Jessica
Paper Book
Winner of the 2020 Southern Book Prize Indie Next Pick, April 2019 One of the Atlanta Journal Constitution's "South's 10 best books of 2019" Finalist for the Townsend Prize Books All Georgians Should Read from the Georgia Center for the Book One of the Wall Street Journal...
Not here to stay friends
Hill, Kaitlyn
Paper Book
Two childhood best friends reunite in L.A. the summer before senior year-but when one of them ends up starring on a teen reality dating show, their feelings for each other get complicated. Perfect for fans of friends-to-lovers rom-coms and The Bachelor! Sloane McKinney...
Wild about you
Hill, Kaitlyn
Paper Book
Two total opposites. One race through the Great Outdoors. In this grumpy-sunshine teen romance from the author of Love from Scratch and Not Here to Stay Friends, the trail to true love doesn't always come with a map. Natalie Hart has always been loud, unfiltered,...
Lark ascending : a novel
House, Silas
Paper Book
Winner of the Southern Book Prize ​for Fiction * Winner of a Nautilus Award (Gold)​ A timely, powerful story of survival set in the not-too-distant future that Margaret Renkl (Late Migrations) calls "a beautiful book...shot through with...
Southernmost : a novel
House, Silas
Paper Book
"A novel for our time, a courageous and necessary book." --Jennifer Haigh, author of Heat and Light In this stunning novel about judgment, courage, heartbreak, and change, author Silas House wrestles with the limits of belief and the infinite ways to...
When stars rain down : a novel
Jackson-Brown, Angela
Paper Book
Opal is an eighteen-year-old Black woman working as a housekeeper in a small Southern town in the 1930s--and then the Klan descends. A moving story that confronts America's tragic past, When Stars Rain Down is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching. The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia,...
At the center of all beauty : solitude and the creative life
Johnson, Fenton
Paper Book
Known for his lyrical prose and clear insight, Fenton Johnson explores what it means to be not “single”-meaningless outside of coupledom-but “solitary,” able to be alone, inclined to mine the treasures of inner life. Americans tend to celebrate “fortress marriage,...
And luckier
Kendrick, Leatha.
Ebook
Wake the bones
Kilcoyne, Elizabeth
Ebook
"YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force." -...
My Withered Legs and Other Essays
Lambert, Sandra Gail
Paper Book
My Withered Legs and Other Essays is a collection of personal essays by Sandra Gail Lambert that reflects upon her experience becoming a writer alongside discussions of disability, queerness, and aging. A seventy-year history of disability is threaded throughout these essays and...
Forever is now
Lockington, Mariama
Paper Book
SCHNEIDER FAMILY BOOK AWARD WINNER ● A poignant and lyrical young adult novel-in-verse about a Black teen coming of age in an anxiety-inducing world, from the author of For Black Girls Like Me and In the Key of Us. I'm safe here. ...
In the key of us
Lockington, Mariama
Paper Book
STONEWALL HONOR BOOK ● From the author of the critically acclaimed novel For Black Girls Like Me and the Schneider Family Book Award Winner Forever Is Now, comes a coming-of-age story surrounding the losses that threaten to break us and the friendships that make us...
Many-Storied House Poems
Lyon, George Ella
Ebook
Born in the small, eastern Kentucky coal-mining town of Harlan, George Ella Lyon began her career with Mountain, a chapbook of poems. She has since published many more books in multiple genres and for readers of all ages, but poetry remains at the heart of her work. Many-Storied House<...
Football triple threat
Maddox, Jake
Paper Book
Michael has the speed to be a great wide receiver, but he struggles to consistently catch passes. The defensive coach sees potential in Michael's speed and has him try his hand at defensive back. Then the head coach puts Michael on special teams to return kicks. Michael is grateful for all of the...
Lacrosse legend
Maddox, Jake
Paper Book
Eager to follow in his father's footsteps, Ramon Hill wants nothing more than to be a starting attacker on his lacrosse team. But his dreams don't go as planned, and he's moved to a different position. Playing as a midfielder lets Ramon put his skills and talent to best use, but he can't help but...
The Occupation
McCoy, Jay
Paper Book
In these formally assured, richly alive poems, Jay McCoy shows us the body untamed, 'brimming / with sweat' and 'musk-ripe, ' driven by hunger and need, slipping beyond will and art. I admire these poems for their candor, their exuberant lyricism, their grief, their vibrant, queer vernacular. The...
Beware the tall grass : A Novel
Morris, Ellen Birkett
Beware the Tall Grass weaves the stories of the Sloans, a modern family grappling with their young son Charlie's troubling memories of a past life as a soldier in Vietnam, and Thomas Boone, a young man caught up in the drama of mid-sixties America who is sent to Vietnam. Eve Sloan is...
Lost Girls: Short Stories
Morris, Ellen Birkett
Paper Book
Lost Girls is a collection of stories that explores the experiences of women and girls as they grieve, find love, face uncertainty, take a stand, find their future and say goodbye to the past. It is a chronicle of the female experience at a time when the experiences of women and girls are being...
The evolution of the Gospelettes : a novel
Oberhausen, Tammy
Paper Book
The Holliman sisters have voices like angels. In 1972, when their father, Garland, hears the girls' beautiful harmonies, he decides to start a family gospel group with his wife Big Jean and four teenage children: the twins, Jeannie and Junior, and their younger sisters, Debbie and Patty. The...
Two brown dots
Quintos, Danni
Paper Book
Selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Danni Quintos carves a space for brown girls and weird girls in her debut collection of poems. Two Brown Dots explores what it means to be a racially ambiguous, multiethnic, Asian American...
The lucky ones
Reisz, Tiffany
Paper Book
They called themselves "the lucky ones" They were seven children either orphaned or abandoned by their parents and chosen by legendary philanthropist and brain surgeon Dr. Vincent Capello to live in The Dragon, his almost magical beach house on the Oregon Coast. Allison was the youngest...
The pearl
Reisz, Tiffany
Paper Book
When Lord Arthur Godwick learns his younger brother is up to his bollocks in debt to Regan Ferry, owner of The Pearl Hotel, he agrees to work off the tab?in her bed. Soon the handsome but troubled Arthur discovers he's a pawn in an erotic game of revenge-and nothing, including his lover, is what it...
The navigating fox
Rowe, Christopher
Paper Book
The Navigating Fox is a fantastical fable of "knowledgeable creatures", in the vein of Brian Jacques's Redwall series but for adults, by Hugo and Nebula Award finalist Christopher Rowe "Half fable, half caper, and a pure joy to read."--Holly Black, New York Times<...
These prisoning hills
Rowe, Christopher
Paper Book
These Prisoning Hills is a post-apocalyptic Appalachian "weird fiction" novella by Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Christopher Rowe. "Haunting and heartfelt, violent and vibrant."--Alix E. Harrow Deallocate all implications, Fortran harrows...
Feel the Bern
Shaffer, Andrew
Paper Book
Who knew fighting for a living wage could be so deadly? Bernie Sanders and his Gen Z intern are drawn into a murder investigation in a small Vermont town in this hilarious spin on cozy mysteries from the New York Times bestselling author of Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery<...
Secret Santa
Shaffer, Andrew
Paper Book
The Office meets Stephen King, dressed up in holiday tinsel, in this fun, festive, and frightening horror-comedy set during the horror publishing boom of the '80s, by New York Times best-selling satirist Andrew Shaffer. Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is...
The wishing game : a novel
Shaffer, Meg
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children's author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner's life in this absorbing and whimsical novel....
Tiffany Reisz uses the pen name Meg Shaffer for this series.
Second Skin
Stoykova, Katerina
Ebook
Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House Poems
Stoykova, Katerina.
The fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s ushered in a new tide of European immigrants to the United States. These populations, which hailed primarily from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, were largely adrift in America's cultural melting pot. Laden with their belongings and...
Mother country : a novel
Townsend, Jacinda
Paper Book
Winner of the 2022 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Shortlisted for the 2023 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction Finalist for the 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award A transnational feminist novel about human trafficking and motherhood...
Saint monkey : a novel
Townsend, Jacinda.
Paper Book
A stunning debut novel of two girls raised in hardship, separated by fortune, and reunited through tragedy. Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky--but when her...
Drowned town
Waldrop, Jayne Moore
Paper Book
"They had been told their sacrifice was for the public good. They were never told how much they would miss it, or for how long." Drowned Town explores the multigenerational impact caused by the loss of home and illuminates the joys and sorrows of a group of people bound...
The animators : a novel
Whitaker, Kayla Rae
Paper Book
"A wildly original novel that pulses with heart and truth . . . That this powerful exploration of friendship, desire, ambition, and secrets manages to be ebullient, gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply deeply funny is a testament to Kayla Rae Whitaker's formidable gifts. I was so sorry to...
Perfect Black
Wilkinson, Crystal
Paper Book
2022 NAACP Image Award Winner Crystal Wilkinson combines a deep love for her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling in this compelling collection of poetry and prose about girlhood, racism, and political awakening, imbued with vivid imagery of growing up in...
Praisesong for the kitchen ghosts : stories and recipes from five generations of black country cooks
Wilkinson, Crystal
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER . A lyrical culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians, throughpowerful storytelling alongside nearly forty comforting recipes, from the former poetlaureate of Kentucky."With Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts,...
The girl singer : poems
Worthington, Marianne
Paper Book
Feminism, Appalachian culture, and country music: three threads beautifully woven into one in Marianne Worthington's poetry collection The Girl Singer. The poet grew up in urban Appalachia, listening to country and folk music and letting it live within her. The speakers in The...
Enough A memoir of mistakes, mania, and motherhood
Zachry, Amelia.
Ebook
A bicultural child of a Malay mother and an Indian father, Amelia Zachry was different from the get-go, never quite fitting in. In this raw, inspiring memoir, she chronicles the long, winding journey that brought her from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Kentucky, USA--the place she and her family now...

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