Lauretta Hannon is a TEDx speaker, bestselling author and writing teacher whose work has been featured in numerous national media outlets. She's also been on the other side, as she describes it, experiencing a childhood full of darkness, poverty and pain.
"Yet I noticed that humor and laughter and lightness could puncture that darkness, even if just for a moment," said Hannon, a 2018 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop faculty member. "That even a speck of gratitude in the midst of the suffering could let the sun in."
Those beliefs inspired her book, The Cracker Queen–A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life, which became a bestseller three weeks after its release. Her newest book, A Priest Walks into a Waffle House: Stories from a Gritty, Grace-Filled Life (Mercer University Press) releases Aug. 4, and includes stories about her “eventual, fitful and comical conversion to Catholicism."
Named the “Funniest Woman in Georgia” by Southern Living magazine, Hannon has been a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, where her stories have reached 25 million listeners. Her memoir was named “One of the Top 25 Books All Georgians Should Read” by the Georgia Center for the Book. A documentary about her story, Raised in the South of Normal, earned dozens of awards at film festivals across the country.
In addition, Hannon has been a syndicated advice columnist in 23 newspapers and a blogger for The Huffington Post. A Hambidge Fellow, she has completed numerous writing residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences as well as a residency at the Lillian E. Smith Center at Piedmont University.