Padgett Gerler

Padgett Gerler was born on the coast of South Carolina but grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, in the heart of the Alleghany Highlands. (Padgett's husband, Ed, calls it Dick and Jane Country.) She has spent most of her adult life in the Coastal and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. She graduated from North Carolina State University (in a brief 28 years) with a degree in accounting and enjoyed a career as a CPA in public and corporate accounting. In 2010, when her love of writing leapt way ahead of her love of accounting, she left her hard-earned profession to pursue a career in fiction writing. Because of her immersion in southern culture and dialect, Padgett writes of the southern experience, from the mountains to the coast. (She is a scholar of y'all, y'all's, and all y'all's.)

When she isn't writing, Padgett loves reading, especially other authors' takes on the southern experience. She also enjoys the beaches of North Carolina, travel, aqua aerobics, knitting, NC State basketball, and doing nothing.