H. Byron Ballard is a bookseller, Witch, gardener and enthusiastic traveler who writes both regularly and irregularly for her local Gannett daily paper The Asheville Citizen-Times, for Mountain Xpress, WNC Woman and others.

She is an Appalachian Witch and a Dianic priestess who co-founded the Coalition of Earth Religions for Education and Support/CERES. She lives with her husband and daughter in the ancient mountains of western North Carolina.