We are excited to welcome Wes Browne and Robert Gipe for a reading and book signing.

Wes Browne’s newest book, They All Fall the Same, is a gripping noir thriller published earlier this year. It was named one of 2025's Biggest Mysteries and Thrillers by Goodreads and one the Most Anticipated Books of 2025 by Book Riot Read or Dead. Set in Kentucky, They All Fall the Same follows cannabis kingpin Burl Spoon’s destructive path of vengeance after his daughter overdoses on heroin laced with fentanyl. Wes’s first book, Hillbilly Hustle, was described by Silas House as a “tour de force [that] deftly walks the tightrope of being both a page-turner and a language-driven debut that firmly establishes a solid new voice.” Wes Browne lives within the Kentucky River Basin in Madison County, Kentucky. He has practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and public defender in Appalachia for over 24 years. He also helps run his family's pizza shops.

Robert Gipe won the 2015 Weatherford Award for outstanding Appalachian novel for his first novel Trampoline. His second novel, Weedeater, was published in 2018. His third novel, Pop, ​was published in 2021. All three novels are published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, the trilogy won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. From 1997 to 2018, Gipe directed the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College Appalachian Program in Harlan. Gipe is founding producer of the Higher Ground community performance series, and has served as a script consultant for the Hulu series Dopesick and a producer on the feature film The Evening Hour. Gipe resides in Harlan County, Kentucky. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.​