Cathy Pickens

Cathy Pickens's first Avery Andrews novel, Southern Fried, won the 2003 St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Award for Best New Traditional Mystery. Publishers Weekly called it "a cozy with sharp edges."

The five books in the series are set in small-town South Carolina, where Cathy grew up and where her family has lived for 300 years.

Cathy has also written a mystery walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina—Charleston Mysteries—and a series of North Carolina true crime histories, starting with Charlotte True Crime Stories and True Crime Stories of Eastern North Carolina.

At the juncture of her life as a business and creative person is CREATE! Developing Your Own Creative Process. Drawn from years of workshops with artists, business leaders, technical specialists, jail inmates, and residential rehab clients, it reminds readers that yes, everyone is creative—but how can you better develop and use it?

At various times and under various aliases, she has been an attorney; a university provost; a church organist and choir director; and a ballroom and clog dance coach. In her other life, Cathy worked as a lawyer and as business professor at Queens University of Charlotte, where she initiated a popular MBA elective on the creative process.