A native Virginian and currently a freelance writer, Emilee Hines taught history, English, and creative writing for thirty-two years. A historian by training, she is a graduate of Lynchburg College and has a master's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is author of seven volumes of Old Virginia Houses, over 250 published articles and short stories, and Globe Pequot's It Happened in Virginia and Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Washington, DC History. She lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.