The Raleigh native, who currently lives in Harnett County, has been capturing the essence of hard country living in her historical Southern fiction since she first started working on novels in the early 1990s.

Her first book, “The Education of Dixie Dupree,” is set in Alabama and was published in 2016. Her writing has since been prolific and predominately set in North Carolina — including her latest book, “The Saints of Swallow Hill,” which explores the brutal work of harvesting turpentine during the Great Depression. What draws Donna to writing about the South? She credits the works of South Carolina author Dorothy Allison and fellow NC author Kaye Gibbons for inspiring her. “Something just clicked, and I said if I ever want to write anything, I want to write stories like this.”