Award-winning author Jill McCroskey Coupe’s novels, Beginning with Cannonballs (2020) and True Stories at the Smoky View (2016), depict unlikely friendships and have been reviewed in such disparate sources as Library Journal, Booklist, Necessary Fiction, and Smoky Mountain Living. Her master’s degrees (an MFA in Fiction and an MLS in Library Science) are a dead giveaway: she has always loved books. A former librarian at Johns Hopkins University, Jill recently moved from Maryland to Vermont.

Author photo by Hope Williamson.

Photo of the Great Smoky Mountains by Christine Jessel Grider (from Pixabay). 

ESSAYS/ARTICLES/INTERVIEWS:

Jill’s essay, “Interracial Friendship in Fiction,” was posted on Women Writers, Women’s Books (booksbywomen.org) on April 7, 2021 (and originally on Cathy Zane’s blog on January 15, 2021). Read it HERE. 

“Friendship, race and growing up segregated in Knoxville,” a review article in KnoxTNToday (August 27, 2020), discusses Beginning with Cannonballs and how Jill came to write it. Read this insightful article by Betty Bean HERE.

An interview with Jill by the Southern Literary Review was posted on August 20, 2020. You can read it  HERE.

Beginning with Cannonballs was featured on Snowflakes in a Blizzard on June 23, 2020. Read it HERE.

To read Jill’s interview on Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb posted on May 26, 2020, please click HERE.

To read “Five Books by Women Writers I’ve Read More than Once and Why,” posted by Jill on Women Writers, Women’s Books on May 26, 2020, please click HERE.

“A Friend from Chile,” published December 8, 2017, in Chapter 16, explains why one of the plot threads in True Stories at the Smoky View involves the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Read Jill’s essay HERE.

In “A Mix of Black and White,” published on October 9, 2017, in JMWW Journal, Jill discusses some of the books she read while writing Beginning with Cannonballs. Read her essay HERE.

You may read Karen McCoy’s June 2, 2017, interview with Jill on The Writer Librarian Blogspot by clicking HERE.

“Two Kinds of Advice,” Jill’s April 21, 2017, post on The Women on Writing Blog is available HERE.

In an April 10, 2017, post on The Next Best Book Blog, Jill describes where she writes. See it HERE.

To read the August 30, 2016, post about True Stories at the Smoky View on Snowflakes in a Blizzard, please click HERE.

In a post on The Quivering Pen on April 18, 2016, Jill describes her long and winding road to publication. To read the post please click HERE.

To read Jill’s surprisingly antagonistic Self-Interview, posted on The Nervous Breakdown on April 12, 2016, please click HERE.