[1] In 2009, Herring released Golden Apples of the Sun, also on Signature Sounds, which The Boston Globe named as one of the Top 10 Best Folk Albums of 2009.

For this album, Herring received the 2012 Coleen Salley Storytelling Award at the Fay Kaigler Children's Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi.

As a witness, a historian, a truth teller, a gypsy, a mother, a sister, and a lover, Herring takes the listener on a journey with her head and her heart ... and there is no more enlightening experience one could have."

Herring has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, as well as the BBC's 4's Front Row.

Herring is best known for her historical story songs, based on such various characters as a 19th-century slave named Rachel and her lover, Columbus Patton ("Mistress"'); child murderer Susan Smith ("Paper Gown"); American painter Walter Inglis Anderson ("Tales of the Islander"); Mae Frances Moultrie, one of the 1961 Freedom Riders ("White Dress"); Jeremy Davidson, a child killed during an Appalachian mountaintop removal mining incident ("Black Mountain Lullaby"); and Marion King, who suffered a miscarriage after being beaten by deputy sheriff in Georgia during the Albany Movement ("Camilla").