KARLYLE TOMMS

An award-winning author who grew up in the rural Ozarks, Karlyle began writing fiction later in life and has written for different regional magazines and newspapers over the years. He has often been selected to speak at both professional and nonprofessional events, as well as radio talk shows and podcasts.

His first novel, Confessions from the Pumpkin Patch, won the 2016 New Apple Awards Medal for General Fiction and was endorsed by Marideth Sisco, who is known for her work on Winter’s Bone, starring Jennifer Lawrence, a film which was nominated for four Academy Awards and won the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.

Karlyle's general method for fiction has been to define a protagonist and allow that character (male, female, or transgender) to tell his or her own story from a first-person perspective as though the protagonist is writing an autobiography. His fictional books are about people overcoming social, psychological, emotional, political, and spiritual challenges.

He also has an autobiographical prose and poetry book, The Gulls Are Always Laughing, which is about his own journey of overcoming childhood bullying and trauma and learning to cherish life and spiritual awareness on the Coastal Bend of Texas.