Janet McCue is a writer, researcher, avid hiker, and co-author with the late George Ellison of Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography, which won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award shortly after its release in 2019. She collaborated with Ellison on several other Kephart publications, including the introduction to Horace Kephart's Camping and Woodcraft and the biographical chapter in the Horace Kephart Reader. McCue's interest in Kephart began with backpacking trips in the Great Smoky Mountains in the 1970s and continued throughout her career as a librarian at Cornell University, where she specialized in library administration and digital library development. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, writing regularly about the beauty and bounty of the area.