Betsy Hamlet Nichols A summa cum laude graduate, university professor, and Fulbright scholar, Betsy Hamlet Nichols grew up in Lanett, Alabama, where it was her mother's stories of her own childhood in Hawthorne, Florida, that fed the author's imagination and inspired the writing of When Summer was in the Meadow. At home in Statesboro, Georgia, Ms. Nichols and her husband, Jim, himself a published writer, have traveled extensively. Ms. Nichols, in partnership with her niece Sylvan Baker, is currently working on a collection of ghost stories from around the world.