Cary Holladay’s publications include eight volumes of fiction, most recently Brides in the Sky: Stories and a Novella (Swallow/Ohio University Press 2019), and more than 100 short stories or essays in journals and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Tin House, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. Her work has been short-listed in Best American Short Stories. One of her flash fictions was nominated by Four Way Review for Best of the Net 2020.

She has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She won an O. Henry Prize for “Merry-Go-Sorry,” a story about the West Memphis Three.

A native of Virginia, she earned her undergraduate degree from William & Mary and a master’s degree from Penn State.

She served for many years as director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Memphis, where she was named a First Tennessee Professor. She is also a core faculty member of the low-residency M.F.A. program at Converse College.