Jeff Barry is author of the novel, Go to Hell Ole Miss (Greenleaf Book Group Press).

Upon its publication in spring 2024, the novel made the Top 20 on USA TODAY’s Best-selling Booklist.

Despite its locally provocative title, the book has nothing to do with the University of Mississippi or its football team. (The title comes from a real-life war story – you’ll have to read the book!)

The novel centers on an endangered daughter and her (very) determined father.

Big John, a former POW in WWII, lives with his family in Hope Springs, in the Mississippi hill country of the early 1970s. When Big John and his wife learn their beloved daughter has been beaten to the point of death by the man Big John pressured her to marry, the action of the novel kicks in.

Jeff Barry is from Memphis, TN (now Chattanooga) with deep Mississippi roots.

After years in farming and real estate (all the while writing privately), Go to Hell Ole Miss is his first novel.

Singer/songwriter Claire Holley’s songs are filled with “simple truths and timeless imagery that cannot be worn away with repeated listenings” says No Depression, and Huffington Post called Claire’s voice “achingly beautiful.”

Her 2020 album, Songs from The Tempest, set Shakespeare to song.

Her song, “Pleasant Dreams,” inspired by a short story by Eudora Welty, was featured in the show, “An Evening with Eudora Welty.”

A native of Mississippi, Holley is a recipient of a Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contemporary Music Composition.

Holley has released seven full length records and two EPs. Her music has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition as well as in film and television. Her previous CD was Time in the Middle.

Holley lives in Los Angeles where she is developing a one-woman-show.

“Claire Holley has a firm grip on the musical vocabulary and storytelling obsession of the South. And like any great Southern Character, she’s as complicated as the recipe for sour mash whiskey.” –PASTE Magazine

Bear Ryan, of Clarksdale, MS, claims she’s an “accidental musician.”

“I am a musician and songwriter who plays gritty country-blues with a story-telling bent. However, I did not sing or perform in front of anyone until I was 35 years old,” she told a recent interviewer.

Ryan has made up for lost time in becoming a very dynamic performer – “swamp country” she calls it – as a left-handed guitarist who plays home-made cigar box guitars.

Ryan is currently working on a new album which is scheduled to include a song-in-progress she recently previewed, “Mississippi Mornings.”