Padgett Gerler was born in South Carolina, where her family lived in the quaint, picturesque coastal town of Georgetown. When she was a child, her family relocated to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, nestled in the majestic Appalachian Mountains.
Her husband Ed calls her childhood home Dick and Jane country.
Leaving the Virginia mountains for college, Padgett graduated from North Carolina State University with an accounting degree. After earning her CPA certificate, she practiced accounting until, in 2010, she left her career to pursue fiction writing.
Padgett is the award-winning author of seven published novels: Getting the Important Things Right (2012), Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack (2014), The Gifts of Pelican Isle (2016), What Does Love Sound Like?(2017), Invisible Girl (2019), The Summer the Air Changed (2021), and She's the Same (2023). The Girl Who Feared Trains (2022) is a work of historical fiction based on the author’s mother’s childhood.Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack and Invisible Girl were awarded the indieBRAG Medallion, while Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack also received honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-published Book Awards. The Gifts of Pelican Isle was a Finalist in the 2018 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest. Padgett’s short story “The Art of Dying” won first place in the Southwest Manuscripters Awards. Her short story “I Know This Happened ’Cause Somebody Seen It” is featured in the anthology Self-Rising Flowers, published by Mountain Girl Press.
Padgett and Ed live on pastoral and inspirational Lake Winchester in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Padgett writes the southern voice, from the mountains to the coast.
North Carolina Writers’ Network