Michelle Collins Anderson, University of Missouri alumna and author of USA Today best-selling book The Flower Sisters, will be heading to Columbia’s Unbound Book Festival with her second book in tow. The Moonshine Women, which was published last month, returns readers to the Prohibition-era world of the Ozarks she explored in her first novel.
Anderson, who graduated from the MU School of Journalism in 1987, spent years as a copywriter before realizing her passion for historical storytelling. The Flower Sisters, published in 2024, was inspired by the Bond Dance Hall explosion of 1928 in West Plains, Anderson's hometown. Her sophomore book, The Moonshine Women, focuses on three sisters who take over their father’s moonshine business and features a guest appearance from Al Capone.
Anderson will appear on the Unbound Book Festival panel Water of Life, which explores the role of alcohol in America’s cultural and economic development.
Anderson sat down with Vox reporter Adela Rakoski ahead of Unbound to discuss how her personal experiences in Missouri have shaped her career as an author. Here's an excerpt from their conversation:
Adela Rakoski: Both of your novels take place in Missouri. Would you ever consider writing in a different setting?
Michelle Collins Anderson: My perspective growing up [in Missouri] is unique. There’s a lot of books about New York City, let’s put it that way. I think it’s a special niche that I am comfortable in, and it’s one that I love.
When I first began to write The Flower Sisters, I hadn’t really considered myself a historical fiction novelist. I was just writing a story that I really wanted to tell, and it was based on a true event in my hometown of West Plains, Missouri, where a dance hall blew up in 1928, killing 39 people and wounding 22 others. It was a really traumatic event in the small town that I grew up in, and I didn’t know about it until about 15 years ago. I just knew, when I found out about it, that it would make a wonderful novel.
The Moonshine Women is a story of three sisters who live in rural Missouri Ozarks on a little mountain with a freshwater creek. They live there with their gran and their father during the Prohibition era. When tragedy strikes, the three sisters are forced to take over the family’s illegal moonshine business.
Rakoski: The Moonshine Women landed you on a panel about the role of alcohol in America. If you could be any drink, what would it be?
Anderson: I think something floral, maybe a gin and tonic that’s made with a floral gin that has something a little different. I’m a big fan of flowers. I am a master gardener. I do a lot of volunteering at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, [and] I have a garden of my own with flowers and a little patch of vegetables. My first novel had floral-named characters — Rose and Violet — those were the Flower sisters. They were very much inspired by my love of all things floral. In my second book, The Moonshine Women, they do live on a farm that’s a rural setting and there are a lot of descriptions of the trees and the types of wildflowers and things that are grown there. There is a lot of gardening in that book.
Rakoski: You’ll be back at your alma mater for the 2026 Unbound Book Festival. What does this mean to you?
Anderson: It means the world to me. When I went off to college I was 17 years old, I knew I wanted to write. The J-School is where I learned the skills I needed. I had no idea what was ahead of me.
