About Chris Tilghman

Christopher Tilghman’s life has revolved around his family’s farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Two of his previous novels, The Right-Hand Shore and Mason’s Retreat, tell the multigenerational story of a farm on the Eastern Shore modeled after his own. His new novel, Thomas and Beal in the Midi, picks up the story of Thomas Bayly and Beal Terrell, white landowner’s son and black farm manager’s daughter, who fall in love as teenagers and escape to France in order to live as man and wife. His other books include the novel Roads of the Heart, and the short story collections, In a Father’s Place and The Way People Run. Chris is a Professor of English and former Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, the writer Caroline Preston, divide their time between Charlottesville and the Eastern Shore.