Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, but calls the nation’s capital home now. He moved to Washington, D.C. for a professional acting job and stayed, performing frequently in DC’s theaters and performing arts centers, even scoring a few television screen appearances, including a Super Bowl halftime commercial. Ultimately he stepped away from acting to focus on pursuing post-graduate work, in due course being awarded Master’s degrees in both Public Administration and Library and Information Science. His debut novel, Red Clay Suzie, is an Indie Next Pick, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, winner of the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, honored with a spotlight luncheon by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and named a Most Anticipated Book by Lambda Literary. A fictionalized memoir, Red Clay Suzie is written through his personal lens growing up gay, living with a disability, and neurodiverse—an outsider figuring out life and love in a conservative family and community in the Deep South. Jeffrey is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise.

2024 Festival Session