Frances Figart (Fié-gert) directs the Creative Services department at Great Smoky Mountains Association and edits Smokies Life magazine, the premier benefit for GSMA members. She is the editor of the 2019 GSMA title, Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography, which won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award that same year. Her background includes editing the monthly magazine for the National Tour Association, editing popular arts and culture monthly The Laurel of Asheville, and providing marketing and communications for a kayak ecotour operator in Canada and Costa Rica. She authored the 2016 title Seasons of Letting Go: Most of what I know about truly living I learned by helping someone die and her new book, A Search for Safe Passage, was just published by Great Smoky Mountains Association and is being distributed by Ingram. It follows a group of animal friends in a Southern Appalachian gorge banding together to find a safe way across a major highway.