Chad Holley

Chad grew up in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He earned an MFA in creative writing in Greensboro, North Carolina and a law degree in Los Angeles, California, where he currently teaches law. His debut novel, Shield the Joyous, published by Bull City Books in November 2024, was a finalist for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing in fiction and is long-listed for the Crook's Corner Book Prize. His stories have appeared in, among other places, Shenandoah, Greensboro Review, storySouth, and Houghton Mifflin's Best American Mystery Stories. In 2022 he was named a Lincoln City Fellow by the Speranza Foundation. He is married to singer-songwriter Claire Holley, and they have two sons.