Chanelle Benz is the author of the story collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead (Ecco Press). The book’s wildly diverse characters all share a thirst for adventure and a crossroads of moral choices. Others face violence or intense longing. Thacker favorite, George Saunders, said: “In every one of these dazzlingly varied stories, Chanelle Benz steps out on to a new stylistic tightrope… narrative velocity and  true prose strangeness.” Benz lives in Houston, TX.

Singer-songwriter Jamie Lynn Vessels hails from North Carolina but a recent move to New Orleans has given her music a thicker, more soulful edge. Her latest release is Home. Off Beat magazine said Vessels’ powerful voice has an “’alone in the bar in the middle of the afternoon’ rasp but keeps opening up to reveal deep, rich, rounded tones that have the carnal oomph of Joan Osborne and the warmth and power of late-period Bonnie Raitt.”

Austin Smith is an Oxford native singer-songwriter whose North Mississippi influences of hill-country blues, country music and R&B are most prominent in his style. He has played in Mississippi for 10 years with Night Lights and as a solo act. He is currently working on a new project in town, Garsh, which is a collaboration with brother, Jordan Smith. Thursday will mark his debut appearance on the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.