Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry | Moderators |
Listed in alphabetical order
DIY Storytelling: A Virtual Writing Workshop With Steve Almond — Sunday 9:00 AMSteve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His first novel, “Which Brings Me to You” (co-written with Julianna Baggott) was made into a major motion picture starring Lucy Hale. His second novel, “All the Secrets of the World,” is being developed for television by 20th Century Fox. He’s the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant for fiction and teaches at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. His stories and essays have been published in the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, Best American Erotica, and the New York Times Magazine. His latest book is “Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.” He lives outside Boston, where he can usually be found, procrastinating.
Barb is a researcher for the Newburyport Preservation Trust. She has researched and placed more than 75 historic plaques around Newburyport. Barb joined the If This House Could Talk planning committee in 2020. She also writes occasional articles about historic homes for the Newburyport Daily News under the tagline NBPT@3MPH.
Robin Bernstein is a cultural historian who focuses on race in the US from the nineteenth century to the present. She is the Dillon Professor of American History at Harvard University, where she teaches in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Program of Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her most recent book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit, was written with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her previous book, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, won five awards. Other publications include a Jewish feminist children’s book, many prize-winning articles, and op-eds and essays in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other venues.
Jane Brox‘s In the Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy (Godine, 2024) brings together her first three books: Here and Nowhere Else, which won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award in nonfiction; Five Thousand Days Like This One, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Clearing Land. She is also the author of Silence, selected as an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review, and Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, which was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2010 by Time magazine. Brox has received the New England Book Award for nonfiction, and her essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Essays, The Norton Book of Nature Writing, The Georgia Review and NewYorker.com. She has been awarded grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Maine Arts Commission. She lives in Brunswick, Maine.
Opera in the Afternoon: How to Sustain a Performing Arts Career — Sunday 1:30 PMKirstin Chávez has sung leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Sydney Opera House, Covent Garden, the Arena di Verona, Maggio Musicale in Florence and many other prestigious companies. She is known as one of the definite Carmens of today, having performed the role around the world. She has also co-written and performed a one-woman show, Carmen Inside Out, which uses Bizet’s music, but explores the character on her own terms, rather than through the patriarchal lens through which she is often portrayed. This unique monodrama premiered in the UK and has since played in across the US and Europe, as well as in Japan. Kirstin is also praised for her work in modern opera and as a regular soloist in oratorio and orchestral works. While doing her graduate work, Kirstin also trained as a Financial Planner and was preparing to take the certification exam when her singing career took off. However, when live performance contracts were cancelled during the Covid pandemic, she resumed her CFP studies and became certified in 2021. She now enjoys serving financial clients and teaching entrepreneurial skills in addition to her extensive performing engagements and her work as Artist in Residence at the University of Utah.
Clarey’s in-depth biography — The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer — was published in 22 languages and became a New York Times bestseller and international bestseller. Documentary film rights were sold to MRC, a major global entertainment company. The book was revised and re-released in North America and internationally in 2024 after Federer’s retirement. In 2022, The Master was named one of the Best Sports Books of the Year by The Times of London and was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the leading literary sports writing prize in English. Based on 20 years of interviews and travels following the Swiss champion and a golden age in men’s tennis, Booklist gave The Master a starred review and named it one of the best 10 sports and recreation books of the year, as did The Daily Mail and booksellers Waterstones and Barnes and Noble. Corriere dello Sport in Italy called it a “monumental opera.” Le Monde called it “an indispensable bible for all tennis fans.” The New York Public Library selected “The Master” as its “book of the day” on March 7, 2022. Clarey’s second book, The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay, comes out in May 2025.
Candace Cochrane became interested in photography when she first went to Newfoundland in 1967 to work in a children’s recreation program on the island’s Northern Peninsula. The landscape and its people inspired her to develop her photography skills to document her experience of life in a small fishing village. Since then, she has divided her time between working as a photojournalist, a teacher of photography, and a cultural heritage program director for the Quebec Labrador Foundation. Her photographs have appeared in numerous magazines and books in the US and Canada. Some of the photographs from Newfoundland and Labrador are collected in the National and Provincial Archives of Canada. Candace divides her time between her homes in Newfoundland and Massachusetts.
Chris has been an integral part of the If This House Could Talk planning committee for seven years. He updates the map of homes, supports the publicity efforts, and takes the lead in publishing the If This House Could Talk book.
Erica Feldmann holds a Master’s degree in Gender and Cultural Studies, with a research concentration in Witches. Her innate interest in the connection between home spaces and wellness led to the creation of HausWitch in 2012. What started as a “micro budget + magic = makeover” interiors blog would eventually become a thriving brick and mortar shop and online community based in downtown Salem, MA. In 2019, Harper Collins published her first book HausMagick: Transform Your Home with Witchcraft. and her second book Intention Obsession: Rituals and Witchcraft for Every Season in January 2025. A Gemini Sun, Pisces Moon and Scorpio Rising, Erica lives with her wife and cat in the heart of Witch City.
Author-journalist Dyke Hendrickson’s most recent book, Boston’s Fading Ink: A Journalist’s Path Through the Good Years of Hub Newspapers, is a memoir of more than 50 years of journalism. He is a resident of Newburyport, and a former writer with the Portland Press Herald, the Boston Herald and The Daily News of Newburyport. His other books of local interest include Nautical Newburyport (2017), New England Coast Guard Stories (2020), Merrimack, the Resilient River (2021), Plum Island: A Vulnerable Gem (2022) and Reclaiming the Merrimack: An Action Plan to Clean the River (2023). He is a former adjunct professor of journalism at Northeastern University.
Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. Her essays have been featured in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. She has also been featured in or hosted interviews and documentaries for Netflix, Apple TV, MSNBC, PBS, Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and CNN. In addition to We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, Jackson is author of Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. She is also the host and executive producer of You Get a Podcast! and co-host of the podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History.
Kate Clifford Larson is the bestselling author of four critically acclaimed biographies: Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (2015), winner of the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award, a People Magazine Best Books of 2015, and named one of the Best Biographies of All Time by BookBub in 2019; Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer (2021) which received starred reviews and named one of the Best Biographies of 2021 from Kirkus, Library Journal, Christianity Today, and more; Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2004)—still considered the standard modern biography; and The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln (2008), the first accurate biography of the woman who helped John Wilkes Booth before and after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Larson is also an award-winning historical consultant who has worked on feature film scripts—including Focus Features’ Harriet starring prize-winning Cynthia Erivo, and Robert Redford’s The Conspirator—numerous documentaries, museum exhibits, public history initiatives, heritage tourism products, curriculum guides, and various other publications. She has appeared on local, national, and international media outlets, including the BBC, PBS, and C-Span, mainstream media and cable networks, podcasts, and CBS Sunday Morning.
Alan Lightman is an American physicist and writer. PhD in physics, Caltech. He has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was the first person at MIT to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities. He is currently professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. Lightman is the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees. He is the author of numerous books, both nonfiction and fiction, including Einstein’s Dreams, an international bestseller, and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. His essays concern the intersection of science, culture, philosophy, and theology. His most recent nonfiction books are Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, The Transcendental Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science, and The Miraculous from the Material. Lightman is the host of the public television series “SEARCHING: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science,” based on his books. In 2005, Lightman founded Harpswell, a nonprofit organization devoted to empowering young women leaders in Southeast Asia. In August 2023, Lightman was appointed a member of the United Nation’s Scientific Advisory Board, reporting directly to the Secretary General.
Debra Michals is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Humanities at Merrimack College, North Andover, MA. A 20th century women’s historian, her published work includes the book She’s the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship Since World War II (2025), as well as the essays “Selling Out or Staying True? Fear, Anxiety, and Debates about Feminist Entrepreneurship in the 1970s Women’s Movement,” in The Business of Emotions in Modern History (2022); “The Buck Stops Where? 1970s Feminist Credit Unions, Women’s Banks, and the Gendering of Money,” in Business and Economic History On-Line (2019); “Dads can Cuddle too: Feminism, 1960s Sitcoms, and the Making of Modern Fatherhood,” in Feminist Fathers/Fathering Feminists (2020); “From ‘Consciousness Expansion’ to ‘Consciousness Raising:’ Feminism and the Countercultural Politics of the Self” in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s (2002), and “The Stealth Feminist Generation” (a term she coined) in Sisterhood is Forever (2003). Before becoming an historian, she worked as a journalist, publishing articles in BusinessWeek, Women’s Wear Daily, Ms., Working Woman, the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, and the New York Daily News.
Not Another Book Ban — Saturday 2:30 PM
Kirsten Miller grew up in a tiny town in the mountains of North Carolina and moved to New York City to attend Barnard College. After graduation, she spent over two decades toiling away in the advertising industry. Today, she lives in Brooklyn with her daughter. Kirsten is the author of more than a dozen novels for young people, including the critically acclaimed Kiki Strike trilogy and How to Lead a Life of Crime. Her first adult novel, The Change, was a Good Morning America Book Club pick in 2022. Her third adult novel, The Women of Wild Hill, will be published in October 2025.
Theresa Okokon is an award winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. A Wisconsinite living in New England, she is the co-host of Stories From The Stage, who—in addition to writing and performing her own stories—also teaches storytelling and writing, coaches other tellers, hosts story slams, and emcees events for nonprofits. An alum of both the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, Theresa’s memoir in essays about memory, family stories, and the death of her father — titled WHO I ALWAYS WAS — will be published by Atria Books at Simon & Schuster on February 4, 2025. Theresa’s writing (and bathroom selfies!) have appeared in midnight & indigo, ELLE, the Independent, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and Boston.com. Her essay Me Llamo Theresa, published by Hippocampus Magazine, was named among the Top Essays of the Week by Longreads and The Rumpus, and later nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Theresa Instagrams gorgeous cocktails, food porn, and pics about Blackness, fatness & her very cute senior dog at @ohh.jeezzz.
Opera in the Afternoon: How to Sustain a Performing Arts Career — Sunday 1:30 PMJohnathon Pape has directed opera, musical theatre, and theatre throughout the US and abroad. Highlights include the world premiere of Griffelkin by Lukas Foss for NYC Opera; the US premiere of Daniel Catán’s La Hija de Rappaccini for San Diego Opera; Terrence McNally’s Master Class for HaBimah, the National Theater of Israel; Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen for Tulsa Opera; Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in Milwaukee; and Janáček’s Jenůfa for Portland Opera. He has co-written and directed Carmen Inside Out—a one-woman version of Carmen that he created with mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chávez, which has played in the US, UK, France, Switzerland and Japan. He and Chávez have also written Living the Dream: Building a Sustainable Career in the Performing Arts, published by Routledge. Pape was Director of Opera Studies at Boston Conservatory from 2011-2021, where he directed many productions and revised the curriculum to focus on building the skills necessary to entering today’s opera industry. He has taught masterclasses for numerous companies and training programs. He received a Fulbright to the Czech Republic in 1994. Pape is a long-standing member of the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society and the American Guild of Musical Artists.
James Charles Roy is an independent author, historian, and photographer who lives in Newburyport. He is the author of eight distinguished books on European history, including the Book-of-the-Month selection, “Islands of Storm.” He has been praised by the Irish novelist Brian Moore as a “writer both erudite and insightful,” and William Butler Yeats’s most recent biographer, Roy Foster, praised the recently published “The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland” as being typical of Roy’s skill, presenting “original, challenging and creatively oblique views” of his material. Roy’s work has been published by leading imprints in the US, Britain, Ireland and Germany. Also a gifted photographer, he has exhibited at the National Library of Ireland, the Boston Public Library and numerous other venues. Roy’s most recent book, “All the World at War,” is the result of many years of research and travel. He has visited nearly every site described in its pages, and prepublication praise has been reflective of his reputation not only as an insightful historian but as a gifted storyteller as well. Jack Fellows, OBE, distinguished scholar of war and international history, Fellow of King’s College, London, wrote that this version of World War I “deserves to become a classic.”
Amber C. Snider is a NYC-based author, journalist, and editor specializing in culture, travel, design and spirituality. Her bylines can be found in the New York Times, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Atmos, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s Travel, Refinery29, Zagat Stories, Architectural Digest, and more. She received a M.A. degree in liberal studies from the City University of New York Graduate Center, where her research focused on ancient and modern mythologies, esoteric symbolism, goddess worship, and the divine feminine. She’s also editor-in-chief and creator of Enchantments, a digital publication from NYC’s oldest witchcraft store. You can read more of her work at AmberCSnider.com.
Bob has been an avid photographer for 40 years. Many people know his work through his Facebook postings. Bob walks miles and miles to capture photos of historic Newburyport, including the homes and signs for If This House Could Talk each year.
Ghlee E. Woodworth is a 12th-generation Newburyport native. Ghlee is the creator of Newburyport’s Clipper Heritage Trail, a series of self-guided history tours accessed via the web, brochures, and smartphones (2014). She is the author of Tiptoe Through the Tombstones, Oak Hill Cemetery (2009) and Newburyport Clipper Heritage Trail Volume I (2020) and Volume II (2022), and Newburyport’s Black Heritage Trail brochure series (2024). For the past 17 years, Ghlee has conducted over 260 slideshow presentations and walking, bus, and boat tours of cemeteries, neighborhoods, and the city. Trained in gravestone restoration, Ghlee has restored over 1,700 gravestones in Oak Hill Cemetery, city cemeteries, and other burying grounds. Ghlee has won several awards for contributions honoring Newburyport history.
