JUDITH TURNER-YAMAMOTO
Novelist · Poet · Journalist · Essayist
Writing toward what endures.
Welcome. My writing is drawn to the extraordinary within ordinary lives—the complicated ties of family, the persistence of memory, and the places we carry with us.
I grew up in Asheboro, North Carolina, and recently returned to the hometown that inspired Potter, the fictional mill town I’ve been building across two novels. After decades of writing fiction alongside my career in journalism, I’ve come home to discover just how much of this place I carried into the worlds I created.
FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Converging Roads” | October 15, 2026
On the convergence of a lifetime’s experiences, the creative imagination, and the unexpected discoveries of coming home.
Read the feature
PHOTOGRAPHY: Alycee Byrd for The New York Times
THE BOOKS
RULES FOR MOVING
Poetry Chapbook | Finishing Line Press | March 30, 2027
Selected for Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition.
THEY JUST PASS THROUGH US
Novel | Cynren Press | September 12, 2028
Returning to Potter, the fictional North Carolina town of Loving the Dead and Gone, this forthcoming novel explores the complicated bonds between mothers and daughters and the emotional legacies that shape their lives.
LOVING THE DEAD AND GONE
The Award-Winning Debut Novel
Loving the Dead and Gone — Original Regal House Publishing edition, 2022
2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal, Southern Regional Fiction
2023 North Carolina Society of Historians Historical Novel Award
Finalist: Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize and First Horizon Award for debut fiction
First Place Fiction winner: PenCraft Awards
Mariel Hemingway Book Club Selection
“How well Turner-Yamamoto understands the complexities of passion, the necessity of work, and the limits of small towns. This beautifully written novel, with its complicated, stubborn characters, will haunt you long after the last page.”
—Margot Livesey, Author of The Boy in The Field, the New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books 2019, and the New York Times Best Seller The Flight of Gemma Hardy
In Loving the Dead and Gone a freak car accident in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. The novel explores the transformative power of death and how tragedy can bind people together even more lastingly than passion.
