Many people work alongside strangers in coffee shops daily, typing alongside one another while sipping on lattes. Local authors are among this crowd, spending their days creating stories and perfecting their writing, hidden among the other residents and students. Haley DeVore is an Athens local and is releasing her sci-fi novel, “Untethered,” April 7.
“Untethered” is about Georgia, a girl who wakes up to a dystopian post-apocalyptic world complete with zombies and a medical lab, having to face her lack of control in her new home. DeVore came up with this idea in her creative writing class as a student at Ohio University studying education. She graduated in 2019 and is currently a teacher at Logan-Hocking Middle School.
DeVore grew up writing stories in her room and said she always wanted to be a writer. When she heard about the 2025 Appalachian Literary Arts and Storytelling Festival in Nelsonville, she decided to take the idea she had been working on since 2023 and finish it for the festival’s publishing contest.
“I was actually sitting in (Donkey Coffee) and I was thinking, I want to sit down and write a book, I want to actually do it,” DeVore said. “I know it's a lot of work, but I want to do it. I planned out the whole story on a yellow legal pad.”
DeVore incorporated Appalachia into “Untethered,” a place she holds dear to her heart, as her whole family grew up in Southeast Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee. She not only used her environment in her book, but she also included two characters from Athens.
“I just kind of found my niche in writing places from here, people from here, and places that are around here, and I love going camping and being outside,” DeVore said. “The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is like my favorite place ever. I took a lot of places that are around there to make my setting.”
DeVore had several early readers of the novel, with one reader telling her they finished the book in one day. DeVore said she loves engaging readers with her characters and unexpected turns.
Nicole Phillips, one early reader of “Untethered,” left a glowing review on Goodreads Jan. 28, stating it grabbed her from the very beginning, and she was completely enamored with the isolated Appalachian world.
“If you love sci-fi, dystopian worlds, or speculative stories that challenge your sense of reality, ‘Untethered’ is a must-read,” Phillips wrote in her review. “It’s gripping, emotional and thought-provoking–a story about survival, identity and what it means to reclaim your own truth when everything familiar collapses.”
DeVore is currently working on a possible book release event with Bookish: New & Pre-Loved Books, located in Jackson. Little Professor Book Center located on 65 S. Court St., has a shelf full of local authors and dedicates its front window to displaying these books.
Stephanie Gibson, a local of Zaleski, a 30-minute drive from Athens, is an author featured on the local artists' shelf in Little Professor, who published her book “The Girl and the Stolen Fiddle” in April 2022. The book follows Melinda, a girl looking for a way to pay for college after she gets fired. She gets the opportunity to get her money if she returns a stolen violin to a strange kingdom with a tyrant ruler.
Gibson is a stay-at-home mom with four kids and writes whenever she finds the time. She has also written “No Good Shepherd,” a biblical fiction telling the story of one of the shepherds after Jesus was born. Gibson likes to incorporate biblical messages in her books and is currently working on a third novel.
As an author, Gibson said she has many friends who are local authors, who all encourage each other.
“There's a community there that is just unlike anything I've met,” Gibson said. “Just very supportive, and you get to work and collaborate together on different writing projects, and it's really nice to be able to have that kind of community.”
Nicholas Polsinelli, the owner of Little Professor, said the book industry is not what it used to be, and the store tries to support local authors. The store will often do book releases or other events with authors to promote their work.
“The thing that really keeps (the book industry) together is the integration with community and that includes local authors coming and talking to us so that we know they publish stuff and how to get it, and then us promoting them as well, at the very least, having them on our shelves,” Polsinelli said. “It's a tough thing to publish a book, so I like to support people who have done so.”
