Join The New York Times best-selling author and North Carolina native Wiley Cash as he highlights great writers across the state and their work each month. Listen in on conversations between Cash and his author friends as they discuss how North Carolina inspires them on the Our State Book Club podcast.
When author Denise Kiernan was 14 years old, she took a trip from Columbia, South Carolina, where her father was stationed at Fort Jackson, to Asheville to visit what her mother called an “old historic house.” Even as a child, Kiernan loved history, and the 175,000-square-foot Biltmore House, completed in 1895, left an impression on her. “It was like walking into a giant time capsule,” she says. “I would never have thought to be in this place ever again.”
Kiernan couldn’t have known then the role that western North Carolina would play in her life and career. A few years later, the self-described band geek spent a high school summer studying flute and piano at the Brevard Music Center. From there, she enrolled at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Her inquisitive mind soon steered her away from music and toward science. She headed north to New York University to study biology. But her pesky curiosity got in the way again: After graduating from college, she spent years living in New York and Europe, doing everything from producing soccer coverage for ESPN International to freelance writing for The Village Voice to working as head writer for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
By 2005, Kiernan and her husband, writer Joe D’Agnese, wanted to move back to the United States and settled on Asheville. After years as a writer, she was accustomed to taking notes and keeping files on subjects that piqued her interest. She soon opened a file on the Biltmore House. She was not only fascinated by its construction but also drawn to the role women played in the home’s history — and the lack of information about them.
In 2017, Kiernan published The Last Castle, in which she explores the home’s history, the life of George Vanderbilt, and the role his wife, Edith, played in preserving the Biltmore legacy after his death in 1914. It was an instant New York Times best seller.
Kiernan’s literary star was already established by then, and so was her skill at uncovering buried histories, especially regarding the role of women. Her 2013 breakthrough book, The Girls of Atomic City, is about the women who worked on the secret mission to develop the atomic bomb in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about a two-hour drive through the Smokies from Asheville.
illustration by Andrea Cheung
Her most recent series of books — the adult and young reader versions of We Gather Together, plus a picture-book version called Giving Thanks — was inspired by her favorite holiday.
“I’ve always loved Thanksgiving,” she says. “There is no particular belief system associated with Thanksgiving, so everyone can feel part of it.”
But it took moving to Europe for Kiernan to realize how much the holiday meant to her. She dedicated herself to celebrating it with her friends no matter where she was, no matter the challenges — including, over the years, a mad dash to find cranberries in Italy and a Parisian oven that was too small to hold a turkey.
During those years of celebrating and giving thanks, Kiernan began to wonder about the history of the holiday and how it came to be. So she did what she’s always done: She opened a file and began taking notes.
“I’m very fortunate in that I have a plethora of ideas,” she says. She laughs. “Maybe I’m also very unfortunate in that I have a plethora of ideas.”
Over the course of her career, Kiernan has sold more than 1.5 million books, all the while following her curiosity as it leads her from one idea to the next, bringing buried histories and forgotten stories into sharper focus.
The 2025-26 Elon University Speaker Series brings purposeful voices to the forefront. Hear from Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci and Army intelligence officer Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Robert P. Ashley, Jr., as they explore what drives leaders to make a difference.
photograph by Matt Hulsman
In We Gather Together, Denise Kiernan shares the story of Sarah Josepha Hale and her role in establishing one of our country’s most beloved holidays. Born in 1788, Hale edited a popular ladies’ magazine, wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and campaigned to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. During the Civil War, she influenced Abraham Lincoln to take up her cause at what was perhaps the most imperiled moment in U.S. history. Kiernan’s book is not just the story of Thanksgiving. It’s the story of a woman whose tireless efforts turned a nation toward gratitude for at least one day each year.
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