Sheri Reynolds was born and raised in rural South Carolina. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992. Orabelle’s Wheelbarrow, her first play, won the Women Playwrights’ Initiative playwriting competition for 2005. Her fourth novel, Firefly Cloak, was published in 2006 by Shaye Areheart Books. Her three previous novels include A Gracious Plenty (Three Rivers, 1997), The Rapture of Canaan (Putnam, 1996, an Oprah’s Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller), and Bitterroot Landing (Putnam, 1994). Reynolds holds the Ruth and Perry Morgan Chair of Southern Literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where she teaches creative writing and literature classes. She won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia in 2003; and in 2005, she received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts in playwriting. Reynolds has also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, the College of William and Mary, and Davidson College. She lives in Cape Charles on Virginia’s eastern shore.