Mateo Askaripour was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in Entrepreneur, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Medium, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, and his favorite pastimes include bingeing music videos and movie trailers, drinking yerba mate, and dancing in his apartment. Black Buck is his debut novel. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @AskMateo.

Jeff Ayers, Co-Executive Director, Thillerfest

Jeff Belanger is an author, adventurer, journalist, and one of the most visible explorers of the unexplained today. He is also the Emmy-nominated host, writer, and producer of the New England Legends series on PBS and the weekly New England Legends podcast. He’s been a guest on hundreds of television and radio networks and programs, including History, Travel Channel, Biography Channel, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, BBC, and Coast to Coast AM. Jeff lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Ali Benjamin is the author of the young adult novel The Thing About Jellyfish, an international bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. The Next Great Paulie Fink was named a top children's book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, the New York Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Her work has been published in more than twenty-five languages in more than thirty countries. This is her first adult novel.

SJ Bennett holds a PhD in Italian Literature from the University of Cambridge and was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co before turning to writing. She has published ten books for teenagers, winning the Times/Chicken House Competition for Threads and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award for Love Song. She lives in London.

Dr. Kate Biberdorf is a scientist and a chemistry professor at The University of Texas. She has a PhD in inorganic chemistry and has published her work in Catalysis, Science, and Technology. Her 6-book series for kids with Penguin breaks down the image of the stereotypical scientist, while reaching those who may be intimidated by science. She has appeared on The Today Show, Wendy Williams Show, and Late Night with Stephen Colbert & lives in Austin TX with her family.

Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian, professor, and writer. She is currently an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, the president of the African American Intellectual History Society, and an editor for The Washington Post's "Made by History" section. Her writing has appeared in popular outlets such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, Politico, and Time. She is the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle of Freedom and Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Vision of America.

Michaela Carter is a writer, painter, award-winning poet, and the co-founder of the Peregrine Book Company. Her novel Further Out Than You Thought was an Indie Next Pick, an Arizona Republic Recommends, and AZ Central’s Best critic’s pick for 2014. She lives in Prescott, Arizona, with her husband and two dogs.

Jacqui Castle is a professional freelance writer and novelist from the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. She was recently named the 2020 Indie Author of the Year and her first novel, The Seclusion, is a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award Winner in Science Fiction, and the winner of the 2019 North Carolina Author Project. The sequel to The Seclusion is currently in production, and is expected to hit shelves in 2021. 

Damon Centola is a Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group. His widely cited work has been published across several disciplines in the world's leading journals, including Science, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, The American Journal of Sociology, and Journal of Statistical Physics. His speaking and consulting clients include Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Cigna, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Heart Association, the National Academies, the U.S. Army and the NBA. Popular accounts of Damon's work have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, and Scientific American.

Kristi Chadwick is a Consultant for Massachusetts Library System, providing advisory and continuing education for multitype library members all across the Commonwealth. Kristi is also the columnist for Library Journal's Science Fiction & Fantasy reviews. You can find her discussing writing, books, libraries, and her love for coffee, chickens, and fountain pens on Twitter @booksnyarn.

Amy Chan is the Founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp, a retreat that takes a scientific and spiritual approach to healing the heart. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of JustMyType.ca—an online magazine that focuses on the psychology behind love, lust and desire. Marie Claire calls her “A relationship expert whose work is like that of a scientific Carrie Bradshaw” and her company has been featured across national media including Good Morning America, Vogue, Glamour, Nightline, and the front page of the New York Times.

Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist, Tor) and covered the NHL for mainstream media outlets. A member of SFWA and Codex Writers, Mike lives in the Bay Area, where he can be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals.

Harlan Coben is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading storytellers. His suspense novels are published in forty-five languages and have been number one bestsellers in more than a dozen countries, with seventy-five million books in print worldwide. His Myron Bolitar series has earned the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards, and many of his books have been developed into Netflix series, including his adaptation of The Stranger, headlined by Richard Armitage, and The Woods. He lives in New Jersey.

Lillian Dabney received her MLIS from the University of Washington. She works as the Adult Services Librarian (indeed the only librarian) and is in charge of Library Operations at the Seattle Athenaeum, one of three membership libraries on the West Coast. She is currently serving on the ALA Notable Awards Committee for 2020-2021.

Michelle Duster is a writer, speaker, professor, and champion of racial and gender equity. In the last dozen years, she has written, edited, or contributed to eleven books. She cowrote the popular children’s history book, Tate and His Historic Dream; coedited Shifts and Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women and Girls; and edited two books that include the writings of her great grandmother, Ida B. Wells. She has written articles for Essence, Refinery29, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and The North Star.

Matt Enis is senior editor, technology, for Library Journal magazine, where he has covered news and trends in ebooks, electronic resources, integrated library systems, and more for the past eight years. He has an MLIS from Queens College, CUNY, and an MA from the University of Georgia.

Charles Finch is the USA Today bestselling author of the Charles Lenox mysteries, including The Last Passenger (February 2020). Finch received the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation Award, for excellence in reviewing, from the National Book Critics Circle. His essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Washington Post, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

Megan Fitzpatrick is Senior Director of Marketing & Publicity for Hachette Audio, a Grammy Award-winning audiobook publisher. Megan began her career in the Advertising and Promotions group at Viking/Penguin and Marketing for Penguin/Penguin Classics, before moving to Hachette Book Group, where she has worked for a dozen years on audiobooks from bestselling authors across all genres from each imprint.

Fiona King Foster was raised in Brudenell, Ontario, a rural community now misleadingly referred to a “ghost town.” Her writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Hobart, Maisonneuve, Matrix, Midway Journal, The New Quarterly, New World Writing, NOON Annual, NY Tyrant, and le Panoptique. She lives in Toronto and works with national literacy organization Frontier College. The Captive is her first novel.

Liz French is Senior Editor, LJ Reviews

Gabriela Garcia is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University. Her fiction and poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is the daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Cuba and grew up in Miami. Of Women and Salt is her first novel.

Molly Galbraith, CSCS, is the cofounder of Girls Gone Strong (GGS), the world’s largest platform providing evidence-based, interdisciplinary health, fitness, and nutrition education for women and the health and fitness professionals who work with them. From employing, educating, featuring, collaborating with, and investing in women, GGS is known for its dedication to uplifting women, and currently serves a community of more than a million women from 80+ countries around the world.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard. Gordon-Reed won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. A selected list of her honors includes a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and the George Washington Book Prize, and the Anisfeld-Wolf Book Prize. She is working on a new book for Liveright/Norton, On Juneteenth, for publication in Spring 2021.

Andrew J. Graff is the author of the novel Raft of Stars. His fiction and essays have appeared in Image and Dappled Things. Andrew grew up fishing, hiking, and hunting in Wisconsin's Northwoods. After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Graff earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in Ohio and teaches at Wittenberg University.

Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Kristin Hannah is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including The Nightingale and The Great Alone. A former lawyer turned writer, she lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.

John Hart is the author of six New York Times bestsellers. The only author in history to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel consecutively, John has also won the Barry Award, the SIBA Award for Fiction, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in more than seventy countries.

Brandon Hobson is the author of the forthcoming novel, The Removed (Ecco). His other books include Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Reading the West Book Award. His other books include Desolation of Avenues Untold and the novella Deep Ellum. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Hobson is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Lesa Holstine is the Collections Manager for the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library in Indiana. She reviews mysteries for Library Journal, and wrote the Mystery chapter for the 7th edition of Genreflecting. She was the recipient of the 2018 David S. Thompson Special Service Award, presented by the Bouchercon Board for life-long service to the mystery and crime fiction community.

Beth Ives is the Associate Director of Marketing at HarperAudio. She has been with the company since 2010 and currently oversees audiobook marketing and publicity for HarperCollins and Harlequin adult and children’s audiobooks.

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, as well as On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.

Greer Macallister’s debut novel The Magician’s Lie was a USA Today bestseller, an Indie Next pick, and a Target Book Club selection. Her novel Girl In Disguise, also an Indie Next pick, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called it “a well-told, superb story.” She lives with her family in Washington, DC.

Seanan McGuire is the author of the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot

Kirsteen MacLeod is a writer and yoga teacher. Her debut collection of short stories, The Animal Game, was published in 2016. Her fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction have appeared in prominent literary journals, including The New Quarterly and The Malahat Review; scores of her articles have been featured in leading Canadian magazines; and her work has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in creative non-fiction, among other awards. She divides her time between Kingston, Ontario, and a riverside cabin in the woods near Bancroft.

Nadine Matheson is a criminal defense attorney and winner of the City University Crime Writing competition. She lives in London, UK.

Susan Mihalic has worked as a book editor, curriculum writer, writing instructor, and freelance writer and editor. She has also taught therapeutic horseback riding. She attended the University of Southern Mississippi and now lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize and was an Oprah's Book Club selection. Named a notable book of the year by The New York Times and The Washington Post and a best book of the year by close to a dozen publications, the novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a movie. A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York City

Janice P. Nimura is the winner of a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award and the author of Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, a New York Times Notable Book. Her new book, The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, will be published by Norton in January 2021.

Nnedi Okorafor, born to Igbo Nigerian parents in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 8, 1974, is an author of fantasy and science fiction for both adults and younger readers. Her children's book Long Juju Man won the 2007-08 Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa, and her adult novel Who Fears Death was a Tiptree Honor Book. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University at Buffalo.

Marianne Paterniti-Book Group Programing, Darien Library, Darien, Ct

Sarah Penner is the debut author of The Lost Apothecary, to be translated in eleven languages worldwide. She works full-time in finance and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women's Fiction Writers Association. She and her husband live in St. Petersburg, Florida with their miniature dachshund, Zoe.

Charles Person is the only living Freedom Rider who remained with the original Ride from its start in Washington, D.C. to its end in New Orleans. This historic event helped defeat Jim Crow laws in the U.S. A sought-after public speaker, Charles maintains active contacts with schools, museums and the activist community.

Jess Phoenix is executive director and co-founder of the environmental scientific research organization Blueprint Earth. Since 2008, she has been a volcanologist, an extreme explorer, and a professional field scientist. She believes that interdisciplinary communication is key in all fields of study.

Anna Porter is the award-winning author of nine books, both non-fiction (In Other Words, The Ghosts of Europe, Kasztner’s Train, The Storyteller, and Buying a Better World) and mystery novels (Mortal Sins, Hidden Agenda, The Bookfair Murders, and The Appraisal). She co- founded Key Porter Books, an influential publishing house she ran for over 20 years. She lives in Toronto with her husband and Gustav the dachshund.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is The New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

Kelly Rippon, author of PARENT UP, is the single mother of six children, including her oldest son, Olympic medalist Adam Rippon. She transformed her skills as an experienced college philosophy educator into a career as a motivational and professional development speaker, investigating how the influences people experience shape their lives. Kelly has been featured on Hello Sunshine, The Players Tribune, CNN and Good Housekeeping magazine.

Morgan Rogers is a queer black millennial. She writes books for queer girls that are looking for their place in the world. She lives in Maryland with her five dogs. HONEY GIRL is her debut novel.

Jennifer Rubins has been listening to audiobooks since she learned to read (turning the page when she heard the chimes!). She has been at Penguin Random House for 10 years where she has been thrilled to work as an audiobook advocate alongside librarians. Her love for audio also extends to the performance side – she is an actress and narrator in her spare time, recently receiving an AudioFile Earphones Award for And Then We Grew Up by Rachel Friedman, and she regularly narrates children’s books for Brightly’s YouTube channel.

Katie Russell Newland is a writer and sports enthusiast with a PhD in language and literacy from the University of Texas at Austin. A survivor of both Hodgkin’s lymphoma and melanoma, she is now in remission and lives with her family in Austin, Texas. Katie’s story has been featured by ESPN, People, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Huffington Post.

Jennifer Schlau is a Reference Librarian

Lisa Scottoline is The New York Times-bestselling author of thirty-two novels. She has 30 million copies of her books in print in the United States and has been published in thirty-five countries. Scottoline also writes a weekly column with her daughter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, "Justice in Fiction" at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater.

Stephanie Sendaula is Associate Editor, LJ Reviews.

Patricia Sheary-Head of Adult Programming, Darien Library, Darien, Ct

Janet Skeslien Charles is the award-winning author of Moonlight in Odessa and The Paris Library. She learned about the history of the American Library in Paris while working there as the programs manager. She divides her time between Montana and Paris.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the forthcoming novel, The Five Wounds, to be published by Norton in April 2021. The recipient of a "5 Under 35"; award from the National Book Foundation, she teaches at Princeton University.

Shankar Vedantam is host of Hidden Brain podcast and public radio show and the author of The Hidden Brain, a New York Times national bestseller. His new book with Bill Mesler, Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain, is coming out in March 2021 from W. W. Norton & Company. Before joining National Public Radio in 2011, Vedantam was a national correspondent at The Washington Post.  He lives in Washington, DC

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine, and co-editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing center for youth, and lives in the Bay Area
with her family.

Jeri Westerson was born and raised in Los Angeles. As well as thirteen previous Crispin Guest medieval mysteries, she is the author of a paranormal urban fantasy series and several historical novels. Her books have been nominated for the Shamus, the Macavity and the Agatha awards.

Heather Walter is a native southerner who hates the heat. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, she is both a former English teacher and a current librarian. Perhaps it is because she's surrounded by stories that she began writing them. At any given moment, you can find her plotting. This is her first novel.

Chris Whitaker lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and three young children. When not writing he works part-time at a local library, where he gets to surround himself with books.

Anthony Award winning author Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai and moved to Washington University in St Louis to complete a PhD. After the Tiananmen tragedy in 1989 he stayed on in the US, where he still lives. Qiu has sold over two million copies of his Inspector Chen mysteries and been published in 20 languages.

David Yoon grew up in Orange County, California, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Nicola Yoon, and their daughter. He drew the illustrations for Nicola's #1 New York Times bestseller Everything, Everything. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Frankly in Love, which was a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Honor book. You can visit him at davidyoon.com.

E. Lily Yu received the Artist Trust / LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017 and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012. Her stories appear in venues from McSweeney's to Tor.com and in eleven best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards.