About Kerry (cont'd)

During this time, I also met my husband, Kiffen, and he wanted adventures, too, so after graduating, we applied to teach English in China at Ningbo University. We spent our first year of marriage in China and took the Trans-Siberian Railroad back to the West. Then we started our family, and we now have three children: Flannery, Lucy, and Norah. All the children have grown up with books, plays, movies, and stories. Kiffen has twelve siblings, and his stories and family music background became the inspiration for Gentle's Holler.

I think every child has stories to tell, whether it's through poetry, stories, or art. It's why I love to do writing workshops to help kids find the stories they want to tell. I wrote Gentle's Holler during a time when I was really missing the Smoky Mountains, and since I couldn't go to the Smokies, I decided to go there in my head every day and write a story of this girl, Livy Two,who loved her mountains and her songwriting.