Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry | Moderators |
Listed in alphabetical order
Kate Bolick is a journalist, essayist, critic, and author of Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own. A Newburyport native, she now lives in New Haven, CT, where she teaches writing at Yale University and is a senior editor of The Yale Review.
Gina Barreca, PhD, is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English Literature at UConn as well as winner of its highest award for teaching. Author of ten books, including the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor, Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League, and It’s Not That I’m Bitter, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World, Gina has also edited 17 collections. You’ve seen her on PBS’s American Masters, heard her on NPR’s This American Life, and delighted in the advice she’s dispensed on the TODAY show, CNN, the BBC, Entertainment Tonight, 48 Hours, and during several appearances on Oprah. You’ve read her in the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today (where her blog has around 8 million views). Her books have been translated into several languages, she has a charming assortment of honorary doctorates, and she can be found in the Library of Congress or the make-up aisle of Walgreens. Feel free to ask her advice about concealer.
C.B. Bernard is the author of two novels—Small Animals Caught in Traps (2023) and Ordinary Bear (2024)—and Chasing Alaska: A Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now (2013), a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Travel Pick, Amazon bestseller, and finalist for an Oregon Book Award in nonfiction. He’s written about everything from fly fishing to wolves to maritime piracy. For much of his adult life, he called Alaska and Oregon home, but can now be found on the Rhode Island coast.
A veteran of stage and screen, Peter Berkrot’s career spans four decades. Highlights include feature roles in Caddyshack and Show-time’s Brotherhood, and appearances on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. He is a prominent acting coach and a regular VO contributor to the award-winning news program Frontline produced by WGBH in Boston. Peter served as director of narration for the Emmy-nominated The Truth About Cancer. A nominee for a 2025 Audie Award for the Audio Drama THE REAL EDUCATION OF TJ CROWLEY, Peter has voiced close to 700 audiobooks and more than 300 for children, winning 12 Earphones Awards and a solo 2012 Audie Award nomination. He received SOVAS awards in 2018 and 2019. His 2016 Audie Award was as part of a multi cast performance for THE STARLING PROJECT, starring Alfred Molina and was part of the ensemble in the Audible Original THE X-FILES: COLD CASES starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. In 2019 he was honored along with a brilliant cast of actors for THE VAULT OF HORROR, directed by William Dufris with an Independent Audiobook Award for AUDIO DRAMA.
Joshua Bodwell served as the executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance for nearly a decade before becoming the editorial director of Godine and Black Sparrow Press, where he acquired and edited work by authors such as Joan Baez, Ann Beattie, Jane Brox, Wanda Coleman, Andre Dubus, Andre Dubus III, Meredith Hall, Nina MacLaughlin, Wesley McNair, Billy O’Callaghan, and Simon Van Booy. Bodwell’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in magazines and quarterlies such as Ambit (London), Fiction Writers Review, Glimmer Train’s Writer’s Ask, Poets & Writers Magazine. Threepenny Review, and Slice. His journalism has garnered awards from the Maine and New England press associations. He was awarded the 2015 Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar.
Mark Cecil is an author, journalist and host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast, for which he conducts interviews with an eclectic roster of Academy-award winning and bestselling storytellers. Formerly a journalist for Reuters, he has also written for LitHub, The Millions, Writer’s Digest, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, among other publications. His work has been featured on NPR, The Creative Independent, The Washington Post, and more. He is Head of Strategy for A Mighty Blaze and he has taught writing at Grub Street and UCLA. His debut novel BUNYAN AND HENRY, OR, THE BEAUTIFUL DESTINY is out now from Pantheon Books.
Liberty Hardy has worked as a Hollywood book scout, a Book of the Month judge, an indie bookseller, and more. She presently works as a senior contributing editor for Book Riot and is co-host of the popular All the Books! podcast. Liberty reads over 600 books a year and lives in the great state of Maine with her husband and three cats, who hate to read.
Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist, and ghostwriter. As a ghostwriter, she has published fourteen nonfiction books with major publishers such as St. Martin’s, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin Random House. Under her name, she has published a memoir, five novels with Penguin Random House, and articles, essays, and humor columns in national publications. Holly holds a B.A. in biology and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Read more about Holly and her work at www.authorhollyrobinson.com.
The Gateless Workshop: A Creative, Critic-Free Approach to Writing & Craft — Sunday 9:30 – 11 AMJill Oestreicher Gross is a native New Yorker who moved to Newburyport almost 20 years ago. She is a freelance writer and publicist who earned a master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and has written for publications including Reuters, Newburyport Magazine, and several healthcare trade publications.
Relationships and Revenge in YA Mystery — Sunday 2:15 PMJohn Updike’s Ghost: Live from the Book Shop podcast recording with Jami Attenberg and Steve Almond — Sunday 3:30 PMHannah Harlow is co-owner of the Book Shop of Beverly Farms in Beverly, Mass. She’s also a recovering publishing industry veteran and writer whose work has appeared in WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Cleaver Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and in a biweekly books column for The Manchester Cricket.
The Gateless Workshop: A Creative, Critic-Free Approach to Writing & Craft — Sunday 9:30 – 11 AMLeslie Hendrickson is a New York City and Connecticut-based journalist. She is also a puppet maker, an Agatha Christie aficionado and has been involved in every Newburyport Literary Festival. She leads a monthly writing group and volunteers for Girls Write Now, mentoring a high school student on writing.
Meg Mitchell Moore is the USA Today bestselling author of eight novels. She is not a native of Newburyport but she’s lived here longer than she’s lived anywhere else so she has adopted it as her hometown. She has an undergraduate degree from Providence College (go Friars) and a master’s degree in English Literature from New York University. She loves writing, reading, and running on the North Shore and spending time with/attempting to rein in the chaos of her husband, their three teen and young adult daughters, and two exuberantly shedding golden retrievers.
Literary Festival Poetry Program Co-Host, Moderator, and Planner
Zara Raab’s most recent book is a new edition of Swimming the Eel. Her poems appear in Arts & Letters, Nimrod, The Dark Horse, River Styx, The Hudson Review, Verse Daily, New Verse News, and Stand (UK). Her literary reviews have appeared in Poet Lore, Poetry Flash, Raven Chronicles, and elsewhere. Having grown up north of San Francisco, where her great-great grandparents settled, she earned degrees from Mills College, University of Michigan, and Lesley University, and eventually settled on the East Coast, north of Boston. She is a Powow River Poet living in a tiny house on Powow Street in Amesbury. Photo credit: Lee Perlman.
Literary Festival Poetry Program Co-Host, Moderator, and Planner
Paulette Demers Turco, a Powow River Poet since 2018, is editor of The Powow River Poets Anthology II (Able Muse Press, 2021) and co-organizer of Powow readings. Her second book, Shimmer, an ekphrastic poetry collection (Kelsay Books, 2023) pairs her poetry with her art. Her poems appear in The Lyric, Ibbetson Street, Mezzo Cammin, The Poetry Porch, Loch Raven Review, Quill & Parchment, and others. Awards include the Robert Frost Poetry Award, Lesley University MFA in Writing President’s Award, and Rockport Ekphrastic Poetry Awards. Born and raised in RI, after a career in optometry in Boston, she enjoys retirement in Newburyport. Photo credit: Nikas Photography.