“Whether it’s with a guitar, a pen & piece of paper or a camera, I just have to tell stories.”  Stacy Dean

Stacy Dean Campbell.
A railroad track running dead straight into fog between bare winter trees, a mountain ridge rising on the left and a mile marker on the right.

A Novel · East Nashville Press

Where the
Heathen Rage

The baby was still alive when Hollis Koker found her stuffed inside a hollow log on the side of Little Black Mountain, screaming into the dark.

September 12, 2026Hardcover · eBook · Audio
Where the Heathen Rage by Stacy Dean Campbell — the title stamped in heavy black type across a slab of poured concrete.
“At turns brutal and compassionate… a superb novel about the stubborn endurance of hope, where moments of redemption spark even in the darkest corners of human experience.”
Peggy Kurkowski, Independent Book Review
“Right from the start, Campbell achieves a vivid sense of place — so much so that the town looms as its own character.”
BookLife
“Like a murmur from the echo chamber of a broken heart.”
Time Magazine, on his records

Stacy Dean Campbell is an American novelist, songwriter, recording artist and two-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. He recorded four albums for Columbia and Warner Bros. Records, created and hosted the Emmy-winning series Bronco Roads, and won a Benjamin Franklin Award for his first novel. His new novel, Where the Heathen Rage, is published September 12, 2026 by East Nashville Press.

Four decades, four mediums

One storyteller,
four instruments

Songs, novels, film, television. Most novelists arrive with one shelf. Campbell arrives with a Columbia recording contract, two Emmy Awards, a Benjamin Franklin Award and a film festival premiere — and a novel with a jukebox running through it.

Books
Four titles.
Benjamin Franklin Award, Best First Book
Records
Columbia and Warner Bros.
No. 3 Americana, four Billboard singles
Television
22 million households.
Two Emmy Awards
Film
Wrote and directed.
Remi Award, WorldFest

The Work

Everything he has made


See the full index
Cover of Where the Heathen Rage: the title stamped in heavy black type across a slab of poured concrete.
Where the Heathen RageNovel · 2026
Cover of Hope Is a Hard Thing: a two-lane road running to the horizon.
Hope Is a Hard ThingStories
Cover of Cottonwood.
CottonwoodNovel · Benjamin Franklin Award
Cover of The Mockingbird Son: a hand-drawn mockingbird singing on a branch above a girl in a wide hat, drawn in ink and coloured pencil.
The Mockingbird SonWritten and illustrated by hand

Free, and yours to keep

Read the first chapter

Not a newsletter sign-up. The actual opening chapter of Where the Heathen Rage, sent the moment you confirm. If it holds you, the book is out September 12. If it doesn’t, you have lost nothing and you can leave the list in one click.

Stacy Dean Campbell seated in a patterned wing chair at home, photographed in black and white, a copy of the novel on the table in front of him.

About

Stacy Dean
Campbell

Nearly four decades telling American stories — in songs, novels, film and television. A staff songwriter at Sony/Tree, then a Columbia Records artist alongside Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette and The Highwaymen. Two Emmy Awards for Bronco Roads. A first novel that won the Benjamin Franklin Award.

The work is connected less by medium than by a lifelong belief in the power of a well-told story.

Podcast

Quiet Stories in a Loud World

Original short fiction, written and narrated by Stacy. Intimate, character-driven stories that favour stillness over noise, told with a light touch that lingers after the episode ends.

Listen

The Publisher

East Nashville Press

Indie Spirit. Southern Pulse.

An independent publishing house in Nashville, Tennessee, cultivating voice-driven literary work. Small by design, and built on a simple idea: good stories, told honestly, still matter.

eastnashvillepress.com