A fifth-generation native of Perry, Florida, Michael Morris knows Southern culture and characters. They are the foundation and inspiration for the stories and novels he writes.

Michael started his career as a pharmaceutical sales representative and began writing in the evenings. The first screenplay he penned is still someplace in the bottom of a desk drawer.

While studying under author Tim McLaurin, Michael started the story that would eventually become his first novel, A Place Called Wiregrass. The debut book won the Christy Award for Best First Novel.

Michael’s second novel, Slow Way Home, was compared to the work of Harper Lee and Flannery O’Connor by the Washington Post. It was nationally ranked as one of the top three recommended books by the American Booksellers Association and named one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Michael is also the author of a novella based on the Grammy-nominated song “Live Like You Were Dying,” which became a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In addition, his short stories can be found in Sonny Brewer’s Stories from the Blue Moon Café II and in Not Safe, but Good II, an anthology edited by Bret Lott.

A graduate of Auburn University, Michael also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. He lives in Alabama with his wife, Melanie.