Anna Hayes

Anna Hayes was born in North Carolina but lived in San Francisco, Mexico, Guatemala, Africa, and France, among other places, before heading for home and settling in Chapel Hill. A graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law, she was a partner in the Raleigh law firm of Manning, Fulton & Skinner. In 2008, UNC Press published her biography of the first and most famous woman judge in the state, Without Precedent: The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp, which won the 2008 North Caroliniana Society Book Award and the 2009 Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction. Her chapter on Justice Sharp was included in North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, Michele Gillespie and Sally G. McMillan, eds. (University of Georgia Press, 2015). Forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press is her chapter about Justice Sharp in Portraits of Lower Court Law Clerks and Their Judges, Todd C. Peppers, ed.

Anna Hayes is the president of the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation, which awards an annual prize for the best debut novel set in the American South (visit www.crookscornerbookprize.com). For close to twenty years, she has divided her time between Chapel Hill and Paris.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Something to read
2. Yellow Stickies
3. Caramel
4. Wi-fi
5. Four seasons
6. Old friends
7. Google
8. Wine
9. France
10. Tolerance