Silas House is the author of the nationally bestselling novels Clay's Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2003), and The Coal Tattoo (2004), as well as the play The Hurting Part (2003), and the screenplay Carr Creek (2006), written with Ashley Judd and Margaret Price. House lives at Lily, where he was raised, and is a 1989 graduate of Laurel County High School, where he was the award-winning editor of the high school newspaper. He is the son of Donald (Duke) and Betty House.

House has received many honors, including the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Award of Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Chaffin Award for Literature, two Kentucky Literary Prizes for Novel of the Year (2003 and 2005), and the fiction prize from the National Society of Arts and Letters. House is a two-time finalist for both the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize and the SEBA Book of the Year. All of his novels have been BookSense picks. His work has been called "perfect" by USA Today, "seamless" by Newsday, and "a treasure" by Bookpage.

House is a contributing editor for No Depression magazine, where he has done features on such artists as Nickel Creek, Kelly Willis, Darrel Scott, Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton, and many others. One of Nashville's most in-demand press-kit writers, House has written the bios of artists like Kris Kristofferson, Tim O'Brien, Leanne Womack, The Del McCoury Band, and many others. House has served as a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and a contributor to NPR's "All Things Considered".

A 1994 graduate of Eastern Kentucky University and a 2003 graduate of Spalding University, House is a writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University, where he also directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. House has a new book coming out in 2008, the same year that Carr Creek is to be filmed. In the meantime, he is working on a new novel and a new play, which was commissioned by the Actors Guild of Lexington.