2009 Fiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Julia Alvarez

Opening Ceremony - Friday 6:00 PM
The Inside Scoop: Julia Alvarez on Writing - Saturday 11:00 AM

Julia Alvarez is the author of several novels, including Saving the World, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, iYo!, In the Time of the Butterflies and In The Name of Salome, as well as a book of essays, Something to Declare, and several poetry books, among them, The Woman I Kept to Myself. Her latest adult work is Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA. She has also written for children, and young adults, most recently Before We Were Free and finding miracles, and her next work for middle readers and young adults is Return to Sender, published in January 2009. She is a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College, and with her husband, Bill Eichner, has established Alta Gracia, a sustainable-farm-literacy project in her native Dominican Republic, where her elderly parents now live.
© Bill Eichner for photo.

Elizabeth Barrett

Elizabeth Barrett worked as an editor for Bantam Books for fourteen years. She is now a freelance editor, teaches writing for adult education in Newburyport and Portsmouth, NH, and is a published author.

Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry Reads from The Lace Reader - Saturday 1:00 PM

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain College in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. Brunonia's love of writing and storytelling has taken her all across the country, but, after nearly a decade in Hollywood, Barry returned to Massachusetts where, along with her husband, she co-founded an innovative company that creates award-winning word, visual and logic puzzles. Since its publication in July, The Lace Reader has become a New York Times Best Seller, and an Indie Next 2008 Highlights pick. Happily married, Barry lives with her husband and her "only child" that just happens to be a 12-year-old Golden Retriever named Byzantium. The Lace Reader is her first original novel.

Richard Bausch

Operation Homecoming - Saturday 1:00 PM

Richard Bausch is the author of ten novels and seven collections of short stories, including Take Me Back (1981); The Last Good Time (1984); Violence (1992); The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch (1996); Hello to the Cannibals (2003); and Peace (2008). He holds a B.A. from George Mason University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa. His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Bausch holds the Lillian and Morrie A. Moss Chair of Excellence at The University of Memphis.

Louis Bayard

The Mystery with History - Saturday 10:30 AM

With the 2008 release of The Black Tower (Morrow), the critically acclaimed author Louis Bayard now occupies, in the words of one reviewer, "the upper reaches of the historical-thriller league." Bayard's previous books were The Pale Blue Eye (HarperCollins), a national bestseller nominated for both the Edgar and Dagger awards, and Mr. Timothy (HarperCollins), a New York Times Notable Book and one of People magazine's 10 best books of 2003. Louis' novels have been translated into ten languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Russian, and he was recently selected as one of Out magazine's top 100 cultural figures. In addition to working as a staff writer and book reviewer for Salon magazine, Louis has published articles and reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ms., Nerve.com and Preservation. His other novels include Fool's Errand and Endangered Species (Alyson). He is also a contributor to the anthologies The Worst Noel and Maybe Baby (HarperCollins) and 101 Damnations (St. Martin's).

Elisabeth Brink

Dear Reader, Dear Publisher, Dear Me. - Saturday 9:00 AM

Elisabeth Brink’s first novel, Save Your Own, is a Booksense Notable Book. Her stories and essays have appeared in Post Road, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Manoa, The Fiddlehead, and other publications. She has a Ph.D. in American literature and has taught writing and literature at Harvard University, Tufts University, and Boston College. Elisabeth lives in Newburyport with her husband and two children.

David Crouse

Stories of Ordinary Lives Told By Extraordinary Writers - Saturday 9:00 AM
David Crouse Reads from The Man Back There: Stories - Saturday 3:30 PM

David Crouse is author of the previous short story collection Copy Cats, which was awarded The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2005. His latest book is The Man Back There and Other Stories. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as Quarterly West, Chelsea, The Northwest Review, and The Greensboro Review, while his comic book writing has been anthologized in The Dark Horse Book of the Dead. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he teaches in the MFA Program at The University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

Andre Dubus III

Andre Dubus III Reads - Saturday 10:30 AM
Closing Ceremony Honoring David McPhail - Saturday 6:30 PM

Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman and House of Sand and Fog. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for fiction, the Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist for the Prix de Rome Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and New York Times bestseller. Published in thirty countries, it was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connolly.

A member of PEN American Center and the executive board of PEN New England, Dubus has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He and his wife live in Massachusetts with their three children. Dubus's latest novel, The Garden of Last Days, has just been published by W.W. Norton.

Anne Easter Smith

Anne Easter Smith Reads from The King’s Grace - Saturday 1:00 PM

Anne Easter Smith is a native of England who has lived in the United States for 40 years, including New York, California, Virginia and Massachusetts. Her love of English history goes back to age 10, when the British education system mandated history as part of the curriculum through graduation. She grew up with London on her doorstep and has walked much of the countryside described in her first novel, A Rose for the Crown, inspired by her fascination for Richard III, maligned by history through Shakespeare’s play. Anne began her writing career as a freelancer for a small monthly publication in Plattsburgh, NY in 1980. From 1986 until 1995, she was the Features Editor of the daily newspaper there. A Rose for the Crown was published in March 2006 by Simon & Schuster and her second, Daughter of York in February 2008. She has recently returned from a national book tour for her third novel, The King’s Grace, which tells the story of Perkin Warbeck through the eyes of Grace Plantagenet, Edward IV’s bastard daughter. She is currently working on her fourth about Cecily Neville, the matriarch of the house of York. Anne is delighted to be a participant again in the Literary Festival and has called the Newburyport area her home since 1999 with her husband, Scott.

David Ebershoff

The Mystery with History - Saturday 10:30 AM

David Ebershoff is the author of three novels, The 19th Wife, Pasadena, and The Danish Girl, and a short-story collection, The Rose City. His fiction has won a number of awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Ferro-Grumley Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. His books have been translated into fifteen languages to critical acclaim. Ebershoff has taught creative writing at New York University and Princeton and currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. For many years he was the publishing director of the Modern Library and now is an editor-at-large at Random House. He lives in New York City.

Julia Glass

Writing about Family: Fiction or Nonfiction?
A Conversation between Friends - Saturday 9:00 AM

Julia Glass is the author of the novels Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction, and The Whole World Over, as well as I See You Everywhere, a collection of tightly linked stories. For all three books, she has just been named the winner of the 2009 Sense of Place Award by Writers & Books. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. For short work, she's won various awards, including the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella, the Tobias Wolff Fiction Award, and the Ames Memorial Essay Award. Her personal essays appear in several anthologies, most recently The Secret Currency of Love (ed. Hilary Black) and An Uncertain Inheritance (ed. Nell Casey). Julia lives with her two sons and their dad in Marblehead, Massachusetts. © Dennis Cowley for photo.

Áine Greaney

Dear Reader, Dear Publisher, Dear Me. - Saturday 9:00 AM

Born and brought up in Co. Mayo, Ireland, Áine Greaney now lives and writes in Newburyport, 30 miles north of Boston. She travels home to Ireland frequently. Among her short-story awards are the 2002 Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Irish News Short Fiction Award, the Moore Historical and Writing Award and the 2006 Flume Press Fiction Chapbook Award (Cal. State Chico). Shortlists include The Fish Anthology, the Hennessy Award, the Steinbeck Award and the Seacoast Writers Award for personal essay. A regular public speaker and panelist, Greaney has presented at many facilities in Ireland and the U.S., including the Irish Studies Lecture Series at the University of North Florida, the International Writers Series at the University of Missouri, the American Irish Historical Society, New York, and the Ballinrobe Library, County Mayo. Áine is currently working on her third novel, Sins of Omission, set in upstate New York and County Mayo.

Dyke Hendrickson

The Mystery with History - Saturday 10:30 AM

Dyke Hendrickson is a journalist who covers cutting-edge medical research, often at MIT and the Harvard teaching hospitals. He is the author of two books, Last Night in Hollywood, a novel, and Quiet Presence: Stories of Franco-Americans in New England, a social history.

Leslie Hendrickson

Sisters as Friends – Friends as Sisters - Saturday 9:00 AM

Leslie Hendrickson is a New York City-based writer whose work has appeared in amNewYork, FamilyCircle, NewYork.com, Jane, and the New York Sun. She graduated from St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M., and Columbia University's Journalism School. Leslie has completed three triathlons, but has yet to finish Moby Dick.
www.thegreatleslie.com

Eric Kraft

Eric Kraft Reads from Flying - Saturday 9:00 AM

Eric Kraft has taught school, written textbooks, and was the co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He was the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He lives in New Rochelle, New York, with his wife, Madeline. His more recent book is Flying.

Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman Reads from The Family Man - Saturday 10:30 AM
Fiction to Film - Saturday 3:00 PM

Elinor Lipman is the author of nine novels and a story collection, including The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel’s Bed, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, My Latest Grievance and forthcoming in June 2009, The Family Man. Her essays, columns and book reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Gourmet, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, and Salon. My Latest Grievance won The Poetry Center’s 2007 Paterson Fiction Prize “awarded annually for a novel or collection of short stories which the judges deem to be the strongest work of fiction published that year.” The film, Then She Found Me, starring and directed by Helen Hunt, was based on her first novel. A fiction judge for the 2008 National Book Award, she has taught writing at Simmons, Smith and Hampshire colleges.

Margot Livesey

Writing about Family: Fiction or Nonfiction?
A Conversation between Friends - Saturday 9:00 AM
Margot Livesey Reads from The House on Fortune Street - Saturday 2:30 PM

Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. After taking a BA in literature and philosophy at the University of York in England, she spent most of her twenties in Toronto writing and managing a restaurant. Subsequently she moved to America where she has taught in numerous writing programs including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Boston University, the University of California at Irvine, and Bowdoin College. She has received grants from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and is the author of a collection of stories and six novels, including Eva Moves The Furniture and most recently The House on Fortune Street. She is a distinguished writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston.

Andrew McNabb

Stories of Ordinary Lives Told By Extraordinary Writers - Saturday 9:00 AM

With stories set, largely, in the textured city of Portland, Maine, architecture, both of buildings and of the body, is the prominent theme throughout Andrew McNabb’s ethereal debut story collection, The Body of This. From a Sudanese refugee discovering the beauty of a new way home, to a mother seeing her true self reflected in her newborn son’s albinism, to a seminarian’s quest for a wife after a single night out, these stories will shock and delight and will, as all good fiction does, leave the reader lightly dazed and wondering. Andrew McNabb grew up in Massachusetts and has lived in Dublin, New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. He now lives in Portland, Maine with his wife and four young children.

Ellen Meister

Sisters as Friends – Friends as Sisters - Saturday 9:00 AM

Ellen Meister is the author of two novels, The Smart One and Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA, as well as numerous short stories. In addition to writing, she served as editor for an online literary magazine and now does public speaking about her books and related issues. She writes, she swears, she sings, she dances ... all from the front seat of her minivan. Ellen lives on Long Island with her husband and three children. Her third novel, The Silver Line, will be published by Putnam in 2010.

DeLauné Michel

Sisters as Friends – Friends as Sisters - Saturday 9:00 AM

DeLauné Michel was raised in South Louisiana in a literary family that includes her uncle André Dubus (“In the Bedroom”); and her cousin James Lee Burke (bestselling mystery author). She has worked as an actor in theater, film, and television. The first two stories Michel wrote won recognition by the Thomas Wolfe Short Fiction Award, and later work won the Pacificus Foundation Literary Award. She has performed her nonfiction work on NPR. She is a founding producer of Spoken Interludes, a critically-acclaimed reading series in LA and New York. In 2001, Ms. Michel made it a non-profit arts organization through which she has developed, has taught in, and continues to run out-reach writing programs for at-risk teenagers. Her first novel, Aftermath of Dreaming, was published by William Morrow in 2006. She lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband and two sons. Ms. Michel is currently working on her third novel.

Heidi Pitlor

Heidi Pitlor Reads from The Birthdays - Saturday 1:00 PM

Heidi Pitlor was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. She received her BA in Political Science from McGill University in Montreal in 1992, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston in 1997. Her fiction has been published in Ploughshares. Heidi is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, where she worked for ten years. Starting with the 2007 volume, guest edited by Stephen King, she became the new series editor for The Best American Short Stories.
The Birthdays is Heidi's first novel.

Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve Reads from Testimony - Saturday 1:00 PM
Fiction to Film - Saturday 3:00 PM

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, the eldest of three daughters. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 12 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and Body Surfing. In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot's Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters. Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13. She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

Lewis Turco

Stories of Ordinary Lives Told By Extraordinary Writers - Saturday 9:00 AM

Although The Museum of Ordinary People and Other Stories, published in 2008 by Star Cloud Press of Scottsdale, Arizona, is Lewis Turco’s first collection of short fiction, he is the author of many books of poetry and nonfiction including The Book of Dialogue (University Press of New England, 2002), which is considered by many to be the definitive book on writing dialogue in fiction. Mr. Turco’s books include Fantaseers: A Book of Memories about growing up in Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, and A Sheaf of Leaves: Literary Memoirs (Star Cloud, 2005 and 2004 respectively). In 2009 the same publisher will bring out Satan’s Scourge: A Narrative of the Age of Witchcraft in England and New England 1580-1697, and Bordighera Press will issue a book of Italian-American memoirs titled La Famiglia / The Family.