KEYNOTES

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science-fiction author who served as coeditor of the blog Boing Boing. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. 

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature. 

Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles. 

SPEAKERS

Megan Abbott is the bestselling award-winning author of 11 novels, including Beware the Woman, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, and The End of Everything. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Guardian, and The Believer. Dare Me was featured multiple times in the NYT's 10 Best Books of the 21st Century piece. In addition, she is the co-creator and executive producer of USA's adaptation of Dare Me and was a staff writer on HBO's David Simon show The Deuce. Abbott lives in New York City. 

Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University. 

Peter Bagge created Hate, one of the bestselling and most influential comic book series of the past quarter century. Born in New York in 1957, after graduating from the School of Visual Arts, Bagge contributed to and, along with R. Crumb, edited the underground anthology Weirdo. Bagge's numerous original graphic novels and collections of comics have won him multiple Harvey Awards, an Inkpot Award, and numerous Eisner Award nominations. He lives in Tacoma, WA. 

Alison Bechdel’s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the New York Times bestselling and Time magazine #1 Book of the Year graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Most recently, The Secret to Superman Strength was named a New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021. Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow, among many other honors. 

Born in Angelica Schuyler’s namesake town of Angelica, New York, Molly Beer is an award-winning writer of essays, longform narrative, and oral history. She leads the University of Michigan’s Great Lakes Writers Corps. Her new book, Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution, will be published by Norton in July 2025. 

Lou Berney is the multiple award–winning author of November Road, The Long and Faraway Gone, Double Barrel Bluff, Dark Ride, as well as Gutshot Straight and Whiplash River. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Oklahoma and teaches at Oklahoma City University. 

Amy Bloom is the New York Times bestselling author of four previous novels: White Houses, Lucky Us, Away, and Love Invents Us; and three collections of short stories: Where the God of Love Hangs Out, Come to Me (finalist for the National Book Award), and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). Her most recent book is the widely acclaimed memoir In Love. She has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Elle, and The Atlantic, and her work has been translated into seventeen languages. 

Melissa Bobe is a fiction writer based in New York, known for her versatility across genres under the speculative fiction umbrella. She holds a PhD in literature and has a decade of experience teaching college English. Currently, she serves as a youth librarian and is the founder and organizer of The Writing Hive. Her dedication to the literary community is further demonstrated through her role as a Municipal Liaison for the New York City region of National Novel Writing Month and as a co-host for Word Magic Chat on Twitter. 

Oyinkan Braithwaite is the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised there and in the UK. She currently lives in London with her family. 

Greg Broadmore is an artist, writer, and game director, known for his work on District 9, King Kong, and Dr. Grordbort’s. His latest obsession, One Path (Mad Cave Studios), is a primal saga of cavegirls and dinosaurs, co-written with Andy Lanning and Nick Boshier. Deeply personal and visually striking, the series debuts soon, with new volumes releasing yearly. Beyond comics, Greg has pioneered AR gaming with Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders, created iconic public sculptures, and plays in bands like End Boss and Ghidoragh. 

A’Lelia Bundles is the author of New York Times Notable Book and bestseller On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. A former ABC News Washington, DC, deputy bureau chief and an Emmy Award–winning producer, she participated in residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell while writing Joy Goddess. 

Isabel Cañas is a Mexican American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, Turkey, and New York City, among other places, she has settled in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage. 

Amanda Chapman is a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith.  An enthusiastic fan of traditional mysteries and of New York City she found herself wondering, "What if someone recreated Agatha Christie's personal library -– even to the furnishings and architecture -- in New York City? What would happen in that space?" And thus Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, the first in a new series, was born. 

Jade Chang’s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and has been published in a dozen countries. Her journalism and essays have recently appeared in The Best American Food Writing, and in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times magazines. She also writes for film and TV. She lives in Los Angeles. 

Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her novels The Wish Child and The Axeman’s Carnival both won the Acorn Prize for Fiction, New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. She lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. 

Jeannine Cook is the founder and owner of three bookstores, Harriet’s in North Philadelphia; Ida’s in Collingswood, New Jersey; and Josephine’s, a roaming bookstore in Paris. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts and an MFA from Drexel University, Jeannine is also a Leeway Art & Transformation grantee and winner of the Black Girl Magic Award, and other awards. She builds communities and is a proud educator and mother with years of experience teaching creative storytelling in alternative environments from bodegas to city blocks. Jeannine lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It’s Me They Follow is her first novel. 

Nationally bestselling, Edgar Award–winning author Eli Cranor played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional. These days, he serves as the “Writer in Residence” at Arkansas Tech, where he also lends his eye—and sometimes, his arm—to the university’s football team. Eli’s column, “Where I’m Writing From,” appears weekly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His previous works include Don’t Know Tough, Ozark Dogs, and Broiler. 

Bridget Crocker is a trailblazer in women’s empowerment within the outdoor industry. A leading whitewater rafting guide, she has led remote river expeditions down many of the world’s greatest river canyons. She is a contributing author to Lonely Planet guidebooks and The Best Women’s Travel Writing series, and her work has been featured in magazines including Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Trail Runner, and Outside, as well as Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line. She lives in Malibu, California.   

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet, writer, and actress. She is the author of The How, bone, and The Terrible, for which she won the PEN Ackerley Prize. Her new novel, The Catch, will be published by Liveright in June 2025. 

Jill Damatac is a writer and filmmaker born in the Philippines, raised in the US, and now a UK citizen. Her film and photography work has been featured on the BBC and in Time, and at film festivals worldwide; her short documentary film Blood and Ink (Dugo at Tinta), about the Indigenous Filipino tattooist Apo Whang Od, was an official selection at the Academy Award–qualifying DOC NYC and won Best Documentary at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival. 

Oliver Darkshire (@DeathByBadger) is the author of Once Upon a Tome, his memoir about being an antiquarian bookseller at Henry Sotheran Ltd. His first novel, Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, will be published by Norton in May 2025. He lives in Manchester, England, with his husband and his neglectfully curated collection of books. 

Pyet DeSpain (an abbreviation of her inherited Native American name Pyetwetmokwe) is a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Tribe, an award winning and global private chef, and the first winner of Gordon Ramsay’s groundbreaking cooking competition series, Next Level Chef. Her life’s work is dedicated to Indigenous Fusion Cuisine, where she combines the food of her heritage, both Native American and Mexican. Originally from the Osage Indian Reservation and Kansas City, Kansas, she now resides in Los Angeles. 

Karen Dukess is the author of The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week. Karen has been a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia, and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations. She lives outside of New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today’s most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Center for the Arts. 

Sarah M. Eden is a USA Today best-selling author of more than seventy witty and charming historical romances, with over one million copies sold worldwide. Her work has earned multiple Foreword Reviews INDIE Awards gold wins for romance and recognition as a Holt Medallion finalist. 

Robert M. Edsel is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of four nonfiction books, including Rescuing da Vinci, Saving Italy, and The Monuments Men (also with Bret Witter), which served as the basis for Academy Award recipient George Clooney’s 2014 film. Mr. Edsel has been honored with the Texas Medal of Arts; the President’s Call to Service Award; the Hope for Humanity Award; and the National Archives Foundation’s Records of Achievement Award. Mr. Edsel is also the Founder and Chairman of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, recipient of the National Humanities Medal, awarded by President George W. Bush. (www.robertedsel.com) 

Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize among others; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a Walter Honor Book, and a Stonewall Honor Book; Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award; Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, which won the 2022 ALA Stonewall Prize for Best Nonfiction Book; and most recently, Content Warning: Everything, their debut poetry collection, and Bitter, their second young adult novel. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation and featured on a Time cover as a Next Generation Leader, they are based in liminal spaces. 

Tochi Eze is a writer and lawyer from Nigeria. Longreads named her short story “The Americanization of Kambili,” published by Catapult, as one of “Ten Outstanding Stories to Read in 2023.” She has an MFA from Florida Atlantic University and is currently a PhD student in English Literature at the University of Virginia. 

Ivy Fairbanks is the author of Morbidly Yours and Heart Strings, and a shameless consumer of rom-com books, hazelnut coffee, and Hozier music. Not necessarily in that order. Living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has made her a believer in the importance of representation in romance. Fairbanks writes stories where realistic characters find love, acceptance, and their happily-ever-afters. She lives in the Tampa Bay area with her husband and son. 

Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York. 

Hayley Gelfuso is an author and poet who works in the environmental nonprofit sector. As a writer, she is drawn to stories of the wild and wonderful that are rooted in real world history and science. Her poetry about her experiences working in the conservation field has been published in the Plumwood Mountain Journal. She is the author of The Book of Lost Hours. 

Natalie Guerrero is a writer based in Los Angeles, California. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Electric Literature, Byline, Goop, and Blavity; her long-form work includes "On Silence," an essay published in Hungry Hearts (Dial Press), and Walking in My Joy (Amistad), an essay collection by actress Jenifer Lewis that Natalie co-authored. In her "free time," she can be found walking her dog, Tupac, in the hills of Los Feliz. 

Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels including The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names, The Room on Rue Amélie, and The Sweetness of Forgetting. She is published in more than thirty languages and is the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series, Friends & Fiction. 

Jane Harrington teaches wordcraft and fairy tales at W&L University and in the graduate program at Hollins University. Jane’s short fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in journals and anthologies, and her indie novel In Circling Flight was the winner of the Brighthorse Prize and longlisted for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize. Jane lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia, with her inspiring partner and a pair of charming mini-donkeys. 

Nathan Harris is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sweetness of Water, which was an Oprah’s Book Club pick, the winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Booker Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. He holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas, and lives in Chicago. 

Lidija Hilje is a Croatian novelist and certified book coach. After ten years of trying cases before Croatian courts, she obtained a book coaching certification and has been working professionally with writers ever since. She lives in Zadar, Croatia, with her husband and two daughters. Slanting Towards the Sea is her first novel. 

Bruce Holsinger is the author of four novels, including The Displacements and The Gifted School, and many works of nonfiction, most recently On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age (Yale University Press). His books have been recognized with the Colorado Book Award, the John Hurt Fisher Prize, the Philip Brett Award, the John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book, and others. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Denise Hunter is the internationally published, bestselling author of more than forty books, three of which have been adapted into original Hallmark Channel movies. She has won the Holt Medallion Award, the Reader’s Choice Award, the Carol Award, the Foreword Book of the Year Award, and is a RITA finalist. When Denise isn’t orchestrating love lives on the written page, she enjoys traveling with her family, drinking chai lattes, and playing drums. Denise makes her home in Indiana, where she and her husband raised three boys and are now enjoying an empty nest and four beautiful grandchildren. 

Aymann Ismail is an award-winning Slate magazine staff writer focusing especially on identity and religion. He is the creator of the Slate video series "Who's Afraid of Aymann Ismail?," in which he offers an intimate portrayal of American Muslims. Aymann also hosts "Man Up,"--a podcast exploring men, relationships, family, race, and sex--which seeks to provide a blueprint for navigating discussions of masculinity. His work has been featured on CNN, The New York Times, NPR, GQ, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Huffington Post. He lives in Newark, New Jersey with his family. 

Gish Jen is the author of five novels, two book of stories, and two works of nonfiction. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She and her husband split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Her forthcoming novel is Bad Bad Girl (Knopf, October). 

Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short-story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection, Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing 

Rachel Joyce is the author of the New York Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop, Miss Benson’s Beetle, and Maureen, as well as the collection, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize, and the critically acclaimed film, for which she also wrote the screenplay, was released in 2023. Miss Benson's Beetle won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2021 and in 2024 Joyce was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University. She lives with her family in Gloucestershire, England. 

Alma Katsu is the acclaimed award-winning author of eight novels, including The Hunger and, most recently, The Fervor, which been optioned for a TV series. Her books have won or been nominated for the Stoker, Locus, Goodreads, and Shirley Jackson awards and made best books lists at NPR, Library Journal, Oprah Daily, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and more. Prior to the publication of her first novel, Katsu had a long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies.  She lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband. 

Brigid Kemmerer is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of more than a dozen dark and alluring novels like Defy the Night, A Curse So Dark and Lonely, and Letters to the Lost. Her stories always feature complex characters finding love while facing the challenges of life, both in realistic settings and rich fantasy worlds. A full-time writer, Brigid lives in the Baltimore area with her husband, her boys, her dog, and her cats. When she’s not writing or being a mommy, you can usually find her with her hands wrapped around a barbell. 

Jenny Kiefer is a Kentucky native and an avid crafter. Together with her mother, she is the owner and manager of Butcher Cabin Books, an all-horror bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. She is also the author of This Wretched Valley. 

Peter J. Kim breathes, sleeps, and, above all, eats food culture. He was formerly the head of food content at Pinterest and the founding director of the Museum of Food and Drink, and is now the host and creator of Counterjam, a podcast from Food52. His favorite brand is Shin Ramyun and he eats several bowls of instant ramen per week. He lives in New York City. 

Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. She is a 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp fellow. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel. 

Alex Krokus is a cartoonist and animator based out of Brooklyn, New York. His work has been published by VICE, Buzzfeed, the New York Times, Comedy Central, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Food and Drug Administration. The latest volume of his webcomic series, Loud & Smart, was published by Silver Sprocket in a volume titled Loudest & Smartest. 

Elise Kova is a USA Today and internationally bestselling author. She enjoys telling stories of fantasy worlds filled with magic and deep emotions. She lives in Florida and, when not writing, can be found playing video games, drawing, chatting with readers on social media, or daydreaming about her next story. 

Peter Kuper is the Eisner Award–winning author of Ruins and critically acclaimed adaptations of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Nation and Charlie Hebdo. He co-founded the political anthology World War 3 Illustrated, and has been writing and drawing Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy since 1997. Kuper has exhibited and lectured world-wide and teaches Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels and comics. His new book, Insectopolis, will be published by Norton in May 2025. 

Allison Larkin is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Home of the American Circus, The People We Keep, Stay, Why Can’t I Be You, and Swimming for Sunlight. Her short fiction has been published in the Summerset Review and Slice, and nonfiction in Author in Progress, a how-to guide from Writer’s Digest Books, and the dog anthology I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship. 

Joseph Lee is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer based in New York City. His writing has been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Vox, Electric Literature, High Country News, and more. He was a Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop and a Senior Indigenous Affairs Fellow at Grist. He has won multiple awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association for environmental coverage, health coverage, and beat reporting and this book was awarded a 2024 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. He is the author of Nothing More of This Land. 

Michelle Lindo-Rice is an Emma Award winner and a Vivian Award finalist and the author of THE BOOKSHOP SISTERHOOD. Originally from Jamaica West Indies, she has earned degrees from New York University, SUNY at Stony Brook, Teachers College Columbia University, Argosy University and has been educator for over 20 years. She enjoys reading and crafting fiction across genres. and also writes inspirational fiction as Zoey Marie Jackson. 

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager. 

Ken Liu is an award-winning American author of speculative fiction. His collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. Liu’s other works include The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms, The Veiled Throne, a second collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and the forthcoming Julia Z series. He has also been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work, which has been produced via Netflix, AMC’s Pantheon, and more. 

David Litt is the New York Times bestselling author of Thanks, Obama; Democracy in One Book or Less; and It’s Only Drowning. A former senior speechwriter for Barack Obama, described as “the comic muse for the president” for his work on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologues, he has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, and more. Along with writing speeches and jokes for political figures, athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs, and philanthropists, David was the head writer/producer at Funny Or Die, DC, and has written and sold comedy pilots for Comedy Central, ABC, and NBC. 

Kara Loo is a game writer and reality TV fan who can be found enjoying afternoon tea whenever possible. Her game writing credits include hit interactive fiction games Surviving High School from Electronic Arts, and High School Story, Hollywood U, and Choices: Stories You Play from Pixelberry Studios.   

Marie Lu is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 15 novels, including Legend, The Young Elites, Warcross, Skyhunter, and Stars and Smoke. She graduated from the University of Southern California and initially jumped into the video game industry, working for Disney Interactive Studios as an artist. Now a full-time writer, she spends her spare time reading, drawing, playing games, and getting stuck in traffic. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. 

Sarah MacLean is the author of bestselling novels that have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. The co-host of the weekly romance novel podcast, Fated Mates, she is a leading voice in the romance genre and on the national leadership team of Authors Against Book Bans. A product of Rhode Island summers and New England storms, Sarah now lives in New York City. 

Stacey McEwan is the bestselling author of the Glacian Trilogy and a popular content creator on multiple platforms, including TikTok and Instagram. Her debut fantasy romance novel, Ledge, has been published in several languages. Stacey received a bachelor’s degree in education in 2012 and was a classroom teacher for eleven years. 

Alice Murphy is the pen name for a prolific Hallmark screenwriter and romance author from the deep south. She collects secret recipes, secret admirers, and secret histories. 

Lonnae O’Neal is a senior writer for Andscape. Prior to that, she was a Washington Post reporter and columnist for more than two decades. She is the author of I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of Marriage, Motherhood, and Work. 

Born in Havana, Mirta Ojito is a journalist, professor, and author who has worked at the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and the New York Times. Ojito was an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia University for almost nine years. She is the author of two award-winning nonfiction books: Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus and Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town. Currently, Ojito is a senior director on the NBC News Standards team working at Telemundo Network. Deeper than the Ocean is her debut novel. 

Lynne Olson is the New York Times bestselling author of Empress of the Nile, Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, Last Hope Island, Those Angry Days, and Citizens of London. She has been a consulting historian for the National WWII Museum in New Orleans and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Mel Pennant is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She graduated in 2014 with an MA in Screenwriting from the London College of Communication. In 2013, she won the Brockley Jack Write Now 4 award with her play, No Rhyme, and was involved with the Tamasha Theatre Company–writing for the Barbican Box. Mel has written audio plays with Tamasha and the National Archives and, in 2018, she was awarded a place on the Hachette X Tamasha scheme for aspiring playwright novelists. 

Sarah Penner is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The London Seance Society and The Lost Apothecary, which will be translated into forty languages worldwide and is set to be turned into a drama series by Fox. Sarah spent thirteen years in corporate finance and now writes full-time. She and her husband live in Florida. 

Princess Joy L. Perry is the recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship and a winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award. Her short stories have appeared in All About Skin, African American Review, and Kweli Journal. Her debut novel, This Here is Love, will be published by Norton in August 2025. 

Chip Pons grew up in a small lake town in Northern Michigan before eventually traveling the world as a photojournalist in the US Air Force, where he met and worked alongside his dream of a husband and better half. He’s spent his entire life swooning over the love stories filling up his shelves until one day, he was brave—or delusional—enough to write his own. He currently lives in the heart of Washington, DC. and when he is not writing or chasing his pup, Margot, around, he can be found daydreaming of untold happily ever afters or on Bookstagram shouting about the books he loves. 

Leigh Radford trained as a broadcast journalist. She produced and presented arts and entertainment content and documentaries for British commercial radio, BBC Radio, The Times, and more. A former book publicist, she is a 2023 graduate of Faber Academy. She is currently developing content for film and television through her production company, Kenosha Kickers. 

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Bozeman, MT, with her husband and three children. You can meet her online at katherinereay.com; Facebook: @KatherineReayBooks; X: @katherine_reay; Instagram: @katherinereay 

Sam Rebelein is the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of Edenville and the short story collection The Poorly Made and Other Things. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, with a focus on Memoir and Short Fiction. His work has appeared in PseudoPod, Bourbon Penn, Gamut, The Deadlands, Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, and elsewhere. Edenville also received a Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel. Sam lives, writes, and teaches in Poughkeepsie, NY. 

Markus Redmond is an actor, director, screenwriter, and author. Known for his roles on Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue, Murder One, Mad About You, Angel, and Fight Club, he wrote and starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Stone in the indie film If I Had Known I Was a Genius. He wrote, directed, and starred in the Amazon Prime thriller The 6th Degree, and has multiple screenplays in development. He lives in Los Angeles and Blood Slaves is his first novel. 

Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The German Wife, The Warsaw Orphan, and The Things We Cannot Say. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com 

Morgan Ryan is the author of stories born from a lifelong love of magic, a fixation on historical minutiae that borders on the obsessive, and a tendency to fall down rabbit-holes. She was raised in a family of writers in upstate New York, and received her degree in theatre performance from Northeastern University. She now lives in Chicago with her husband. A Resistance of Witches is her first novel. 

Louis Sachar is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Holes, which won the Newbery Medal, and the National Book Award. He’s also written the Wayside School series, There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom, Fuzzy Mud, The Cardturner, and many other books for young people. The Magician of Tiger Castle will be his first book specifically for adults. 

Julia Seales is the author of A Most Agreeable Murder, and a screenwriter based in Los Angeles. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University. She is a lifelong Anglophile with a passion for both murder mysteries and Jane Austen. Julia is originally from Kentucky, where she learned about manners (and bourbon). 

Neil Shea is a writer and journalist based in Brooklyn. For more than fifteen years he’s written for National Geographic, reporting around the world at the intersections of conflict, climate science, and cultural change. He’s a cocreator of the Peabody Award–nominated podcast Unfinished: Deep South, and he also writes for film and television, scripted and documentary. 

Danie Shokoohi (she/they) is the managing editor at Half Mystic Press. She was raised a Michigander by her Iranian mother and American father but she’s lived in five of the twelve Midwestern States. Currently, Danie lives in Paris. 

Erika J. Simpson is a Southern girl living in Denver, Colorado, with her partner and their black cat. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky and is the recipient of the 2021 MFA Award in Nonfiction. Her essay “If You Ever Find Yourself” was published in Roxane Gay’s The Audacity and featured in Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee. This Is Your Mother is her debut memoir, and she also writes fiction for the page and screen. 

Kaylie Smith (she/they) is a USA Today bestselling writer and lover of all things fantasy. They grew up in Louisiana where they frequently haunted bookstores and practiced her craft. After college she decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an author, but when she isn’t writing or reading, she can be found at home with her menagerie of animals, fussing over their houseplants, or annoying people about astrology. 

Patricia Smith is an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry. A Guggenheim Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, Smith is a creative writing professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former distinguished professor at the City University of New York. 

Becky Spratford [MLIS] is a librarian specializing in serving patrons ages 13 and up.  She writes reviews for Booklist and a Horror review column for Library Journal. Known for her work with Horror readers, Becky is the author of three textbooks for library workers, most recently, The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021]. She is on the Shirley Jackson Award Advisory Board and is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, currently serving as the Association’s Secretary and Co-Chair of their Library Committee. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband, where they raised their now adult children. 

Lucy Steeds is a novelist and a graduate of the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in World Literatures from the University of Oxford. She has lived in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Singapore. The Artist and the Feast is her first novel. 

Nell Stevens is the author of Briefly, a Delicious Life and two memoirs, Bleaker House and The Victorian and the Romantic. Her new novel, The Original, will be published by Norton in July 2025.  She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Warwick and lives in Oxfordshire, England. 

Emma Nanami Strenner is British Japanese and has a degree in Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Leeds. She has worked as a journalist for almost twenty years and as a section editor for Vogue International, Elle, and Stylist. She spent most of her life living abroad in Japan, Vietnam, Australia, China, and the United States. This is her debut novel. 

Jesse Q. Sutanto is the award-winning, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Well, That Was Unexpected, The Obsession, and Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit. The film rights to Dial A for Aunties was bought by Netflix, and the TV rights to Vera Wong was bought by Warner Bros, with Oprah and Mindy Kaling attached to produce. Jesse lives in Indonesia with her husband, her two daughters, and her ridiculously large extended family. 

Alix Traeger is a longtime food & lifestyle creator; her approachable recipes and playful flair have garnered her over 2 million followers across social media. Known for her viral recipe videos during her time as a video producer at BuzzFeed Tasty, Alix has since taken her talents beyond the Tasty kitchen, sharing her deliciously messy adventures on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and her Substack, A to Z. She’s all about embracing the messiness of life and cooking, learning and laughing along the way. 

Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one books of fiction and nonfiction published in thirty-eight languages. In 2023, President Sergio Mattarella of Italy named her Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia. She is an award-winning playwright, television writer/producer, and filmmaker. Among her screen credits, Trigiani wrote and directed the major motion picture adaptation of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap. Adriana grew up in Appalachia, in the mountains of southwest Virginia, where she cofounded the Origin Project, an in-school writing program. Trigiani is honored to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts. She lives in Greenwich Village with her family. 

Nicholas Triolo is a writer, filmmaker, photographer, activist, and long-distance trail runner. His writing and images have been featured in Orion, Outside, Terrain.org, and Trail Runner. He resides in Missoula, Montana. 

Kathy Wang is the author of Family Trust, Imposter Syndrome, and The Satisfaction Café. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and lives in the Bay Area.  

Helen Whybrow is a former editor at W.W. Norton & Company and author of A Man Apart: Bill Coperthwaite’s Radical Experiment in Living. She lives on a 200-acre organic sheep farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont. 

Ellen Marie Wiseman is a New York Times bestselling author known for the compassion, authenticity, and depth with which her novels explore real historical injustices. Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, she’s a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Since then, her novels have been published worldwide, translated into twenty languages, and sold more than one million copies in the United States alone. Visit her online at EllenMarieWiseman.com. 

Michelle Wong is a writer and artist from Hong Kong. She illustrated The Legend of Korra and Goosebumps graphic novels, and is the creator of the upcoming graphic novel, Terminal Hope. House of the Beast is her debut novel. 

Jennifer Young is a game writer, avid romance reader, and Dungeons & Dragons adventurer. Her game writing credits include hit interactive fiction games Surviving High School from Electronic Arts, and High School Story, Hollywood U, and Choices: Stories You Play from Pixelberry Studios. 

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. 

Sara Duff is the Acquisitions & Collection Assessment Librarian at the University of Central Florida where she coordinates all monograph & video acquisitions. She is the current vice chair of ALA RUSA CODES and has served on CODES book awards committees for the past 8 years, including chairing the Notable Books Council. She can often be found watching tennis, drinking too much coffee, or attempting to organize her bookshelves.  

Andrea Gough has worked in public libraries as both a reader services and adult services librarian, currently at The Seattle Public Library. Andrea served on the ALA RUSA CODES Reading List Committee, devouring the best books across eight different genres. While every genre has its day, Andrea is particularly drawn to fiction that explores women’s lives and relationships, mysteries, fantasy, and that nebulous category: literary fiction. While you should not judge a book by its cover, if that cover has a horse on it then Andrea will absolutely pick it up.

Janeé Jackson-Doering is the Youth Services Consultant for the State Library of Iowa. She has worked as a librarian in small and large public libraries in Iowa for over 10 ½ years. Janeé also is the host of Check It Out, an online book talking platform for public librarians in Iowa. When she’s not working on youth-related projects, she loves to read all kinds of Horror Fiction and has loved the Horror genre since childhood. Janeé lives in Des Moines, Iowa with her husband and their furry cat, Aslan. 

Jane Jorgenson has worked for Madison Public Library as a page, clerk, librarian and supervisor and is part of the readers services team. She was able to indulge her love of mysteries by working in a mystery book store for 10 years – she spent more than she made, if that gives you an idea. And she has put that knowledge to use in creating content at Madison Public Library and reviewing for Library Journal. 

Julie Kane’s librarianship has been primarily academic and influenced by her lifelong love of reading. Her BA is from Mount Holyoke, MS LIS from Simmons, MA in English from Lynchburg, and perspective from growing up in Vermont and moving on to life and jobs in New England, California, and Virginia. She has served on the ALA Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award panel and was a 2023 LJ Reviewer of the Year. Findable on Instagram at @kanedomain, she’s madly in love with reading, learning to knit and following the adventures of her Plott hound, Hobbes.

Lynnanne Pearson is an Information Librarian at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. She has presented at several library conferences on readers advisory, genres, book discussions and eBooks, among other topics. She has also served on statewide committees as well as the Library Journal Best of Popular fiction subcommittee. She currently writes book reviews for both Library Journal and Booklist and was named one of 2020 Library Journal Reviewers of the Year. 

Ashley Rayner is a research librarian at NORC at the University of Chicago. She has been an academic and public librarian as well, all within the Chicagoland area. Ashley loves reading any genre but she has a special love for speculative fiction, historical fiction, and thrillers. She started writing book reviews for Booklist in 2020 and they help her stay connected to fiction as a librarian at a social science research organization. When she's not reading or researching, Ashley can be found playing video games, cooking, planning her next karaoke debut song, tweeting at @ashley_rayner, or hanging out with her husband and two kids. 

Micahel Rodriguez (he/him) is a senior strategist at Lyrasis, a community-supported nonprofit whose mission is to support enduring access to our shared academic, scientific, and cultural heritage. Michael has worked in public and academic libraries and consortia for more than 10 years and recently served as president of the New England Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL).

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