Season 4, Episode 1: Jess Montgomery

Our new Writer-in-Residence is local author Jessica Strawser and her first guest on the Inside the Writer's Head podcast is Jess Montgomery Montgomery is the author of THE WIDOWS (Minotaur Books), a new historical mystery set in the 1920s, in which two women work together to solve a tragic murder and save their community. On the podcast, they discuss writing, storytelling, and writing history specifically. Loosely inspired by the true story of Ohio's first female sheriff in 1925, Montgomery's novel is set in Southeast Ohio's Appalachian foothills and depicts coal mining, Prohibition, workers' rights, women's rights, and other issues that still resonate today. Early chapters of the novel earned Jess an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House in Columbus. She is already at work on the second book in the series, The Hollows, forthcoming in 2020. Listen in for some great insight!