Rachel Smalley smiling with short blonde hair holding a children's book titled "TUFTED" outdoors in front of a leafy green hedge.
Logo for Hillbety Books featuring five stylized mountain icons and the tagline "Appalachian. Storytelling. Unraveled."

Inspired by the past, designed for the future. 

Hillbetty Books is Rachel Smalley’s independent publishing imprint, created to carry overlooked Appalachian stories forward in fresh and meaningful ways. 

Its books begin with the history, places, language, creativity, humor, traditions, and sense of community that shape Appalachia, then make room for a new generation of readers to enter the story. 

Stories that carry pride of place from one generation to the next. 

EXPLORE TUFTED
Catherine Evans Whitener illustration with curly hair, wearing a beige and red striped shirt, is holding onto a large wooden spinning wheel, looking at it with curiosity.

What Is a Hillbetty? 

A Hillbetty takes what came before and turns it into what comes next. 

She draws from the stories, music, language, handwork, humor, and traditions of Appalachia, then reshapes them into something distinctly her own. She sees inheritance not as something to preserve behind glass, but as raw material for invention. 

A song becomes a career. A family story becomes a book. A needle and yarn become an industry. 

Rooted in where she comes from but never limited by it, a Hillbetty turns inheritance into invention. 

Around here, we say Hillbetty with pride. 

INSPIRED BY THE PAST, DESIGNED FOR THE FUTURE

Our Mission 

Hillbetty Books publishes a carefully curated catalogue of books that carry pride of place from one generation to the next. 

The catalogue brings together fiction and nonfiction for readers of different ages, from picture books and early readers to middle-grade and young adult titles. Across subjects and genres, each book carries a thread of Appalachia through the region’s history, landscape, language, creativity, humor, values, or sense of community. 

Some books preserve overlooked people and stories from the region. Others are entirely imagined. All are created with care, shaped by curiosity, and grounded in the belief that where we come from can help us understand who we are and imagine what comes next. 

What Guides Us 

  • Storytelling

    We believe a well-told story can chronicle a life, illuminate a place, connect generations, and help readers see the world from a different point of view. Every good story also leaves room for the reader—space to wonder, predict, interpret, and ask what might happen next. 

  • Curiosity

    Every book should begin with something worth wondering about. We want our stories to encourage readers to ask questions, follow ideas, and look more closely at the people, places, and histories around them. 

  • Authenticity

    We approach real people, communities, and histories with honesty, specificity, respect, and care. That means going to the sources, asking the harder questions, and getting the details right. In fiction, authenticity means creating characters, settings, and emotions that feel true, even when the story itself is imagined. 

  • Craft

    The way a book is made matters. Hillbetty Books brings writing, research, illustration, design, editing, and production together to create books that are purposeful, artful, and made to last. 

  • Lifelong Learning

    We want our books to do more than deliver information. The best books invite readers to investigate and discover alongside the people on the page, and they keep working in the mind long after the cover is closed. A good book ends; the learning does not. 

  • Connection

    Stories can connect a child to a place, one generation to another, a community to its own history, and a local story to the larger human experience. We publish with the belief that those connections matter. 

Children's book titled 'TUFTED' resting on green clover leaves, featuring illustrated girl holding a tufted fabric with mountains and trees in the background.

TUFTED: THE STITCH & STORY OF CATHERINE EVANS WHITENER

Our First Book 

From Appalachia comes a true story in which curiosity, problem-solving, and perseverance turn one simple idea into something much larger. 

Long before women were commonly called entrepreneurs, Catherine Evans Whitener transformed creativity into opportunity. Her hand-tufted bedspreads helped other women earn income from home, contributed to a growing cottage industry, and became part of the story that carried Dalton from the Bedspread Center of the World to the Carpet Capital of the World. 

EXPLORE TUFTED

Net proceeds from the first printing of TUFTED support the Appalachian Historic Preservation Fund at the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia. 

Rachel Smalley with blonde hair and glasses selecting a book from a red bookshelf. She is wearing a brown jacket and a white shirt, and is focused on choosing a book in a well-lit room.

The Stories Ahead 

TUFTED is the first book from Hillbetty Books, but it is only the beginning. 

Hillbetty Books is being built to support carefully made fiction and nonfiction for readers of different ages. The forms and subjects may vary, but a common thread will run through every title: respect for story, place, language, craft, curiosity, and the reader. 

Sometimes Appalachia may be at the center of the story. In other books, the connection may appear more quietly—in a landscape, a family history, a turn of phrase, a character’s resilience, a tradition, or the way a community cares for its own. 

The catalogue will grow beyond any single kind of book, but the purpose will remain the same: to create meaningful, beautifully made stories that honor where they come from while making room for where readers and stories may go next.