100 People to Meet in 2024: Storytellers

Dating back to Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner, Virginia has hosted its fair share of writers and creative types, a rich tradition that these Virginians carry into the present.

S.A. Cosby

Author
Gloucester

Before his writing career took off, S.A. Cosby, who goes by Shawn, worked a lot of jobs similar to the characters in his novels — bouncer, forklift driver, landscaper, construction worker. It took a couple of decades and a lot of rejections until he caught a break, finding a Manhattan-based literary agent.

Today, Cosby’s a celebrated “Southern noir” author whose crime novels are set in familiar places in rural Virginia, like Mathews County, where he grew up, and Gloucester County. 

His 2020 novel, “Blacktop Wasteland,” received critical acclaim; subsequent novels “Razorblade Tears” and “All the Sinners Bleed” have been New York Times bestsellers and landed on several “best of” reading lists, including former President Barack Obama’s.

The first time Obama singled out one of his novels was “surreal,” Cosby says, thinking he’d reached his pinnacle. “The second time, it makes you feel like, ‘OK, what is happening?’”

Barbara Kingsolver

Author and poet
Washington County

Celebrated author Barbara Kingsolver grew up in Nicholas County, Kentucky, though she later learned of family roots in Virginia’s Washington County. She has also lived in the Republic of Congo, France, Arizona and the Canary Islands, but in 1993, a fellowship at then-Emory & Henry College brought her to Virginia, where the mother of two moved full-time in 2004.

Her novels generally center on social justice issues. Her most recent, “Demon Copperhead,” won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for literature. A retelling of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” set in Southwest Virginia, it tackles the opioids crisis and rural poverty. Her 1998 novel, “The Poisonwood Bible” was also a Pulitzer finalist.

In 2000, Kingsolver established the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, which awards a publishing contract and $25,000 to the author of an unpublished novel every other year.

John Park

Co-owner and co-founder, The JPG Agency
Roanoke

John Park spent 19 years as a financial planner, but digital storytelling — especially about food — is his true calling. In 2018, Park co-founded his marketing agency to help restaurants and other small businesses with digital marketing and managing their social media presences. An avid foodie and food photographer, Park is perhaps best known for his “Hungry Asian” (@hungryasianrke) Instagram account, which has grown to more than 10,000 followers over the past decade. “I don’t consider myself an influencer,” Park says. “To me, it’s just a way to share my life and food journey, mainly through the Southeast.”

Courteney Stuart

Podcast host, “Small Town, Big Crime”; radio host, WINA
Charlottesville

A longtime journalist and local radio news host, Courteney Stuart switched mediums several times while pursuing her love of investigative journalism, including stints in TV news, radio and podcasting. “I’ve sort of been cavorting through the media landscape in Charlottesville,” she says. “I love stories.”

In 2019, Stuart and her “Small Town, Big Crime” podcast co-host, Rachel Ryan, began investigating a notorious 1985 Virginia double murder. Jens Soering, then a University of Virginia student from Germany, was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend’s parents in their Bedford County home; his girlfriend and fellow U.Va. student, Elizabeth Haysom, was convicted of two counts of accessory before the fact. But there have long been questions about Soering’s guilt, even among some law enforcement officers, an angle Stuart and Ryan examined.

In November, Stuart was featured in Netflix’s “Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom,” which quickly shot to the streaming platform’s No. 1 show in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. A second podcast season, covering a new case, is coming soon.

Check out the other 100 People to Meet in 2024.