Alumni Authors

Centre College graduates have long made their mark in the literary world. This page highlights the published works of our alumni, showcasing the diverse voices and creative achievements of the Centre community.

To be included in the alumni author directory, email alumni@centre.edu with your book name and a link to a website you would like to use. 

Authors, listed alphabetically

Kathleen Brooks is an American author of more than thirty titles. She is a multiple New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of romantic suspense and mystery books.

View her works here.

A Dog Named Bingo

My Favorite Things: Celebrity Cookbook

From the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame (inducted in 2022): George Ella Lyon is a poet, writer, teacher, musician, storyteller and social activist with Appalachian roots and a global reach. She has published 10 poetry collections, two adult novels, six novels for young people and 34 children’s picture books, plus stories, songs, plays, scripts and memoirs.

View her site with complete works here.

Selected Awards and Honors
Kentucky Poet Laureate (2015-2016)
Jane Addams Honor Book for You and Me and Home Sweet Home
ALA’s Schneider Family Book Award for The Pirate of Kindergarten
Aesop Award for Which Side Are You On? The Story of a Song
Junior Library Guild Selection and Parents’ Choice Honor for Mother to Tigers
Cybils Award for Poetry for Voices from the March on Washington
Kentucky Bluegrass Award for Basket                                                  
Kentucky Bluegrass Award for One Lucky Girl                                  
New York Times Best Books for Teens and Prinz Award finalist for Where I’m From, Where Poems Come From   
Appalachian Book of the Year for Catalpa
Golden Kite Award for Borrowed Children
Lamont Hall Award for Mountain
KSMA’s Jesse Stuart Award, Chaffin Award for her body of work

Beaumont Inn: Two Centuries of Service
Historic Architecture of Shelby County, Kentucky, 1792-1915
Walter H. Kiser's Neighborhood Sketches Revisited

Tiffany Reisz Shaffer '00 is a USA Today bestselling author of the Romance Writers of America RITA®-winning Original Sinners series from Harlequin's Mira Books.

Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Tiffany graduated from Centre College with a B.A. in English. She began her writing career while a student at Wilmore, Kentucky's Asbury Theological Seminary. After leaving seminary to focus on her fiction, she wrote The Siren, which has sold more than half a million copies worldwide.

View her complete works here.

Under the pen name Meg Shaffer, she is a USA Today bestselling author of The Wishing Game, which was a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist, a Book-of-the-Month finalist for Book of the Year, a #1 Barnes & Noble bestseller, and a Reader’s Digest Best Book of the Year. 

View those works here

Marcia Mount Shoop '91 is an ordained Presbyterian minister and serves as theologian-in-residence at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

View her site and books here

Otherwhere: Muddy Waters (2017)

The Winds of Morning 
The Woodman's Rose
Whispers in the Canyon

Like Walking Onto Another Planet