Children/Teens | Fiction | Nonfiction | Poetry | Moderators
Listed in alphabetical order
Where the Bodies are Buried: The Power of Place in Crime Fiction [br] — Saturday 9:00 AM [br]The Fifth Petal, by Brunonia Barry — Saturday 2:30 PM
Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and international best selling author of The Lace Reader and The Map of True Places. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction and Amazon’s Best of the Month. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times and The Washington Post. Brunonia co-chairs the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee. She lives in Salem with her husband Gary Ward and their dog, Angel. Her new novel, The Fifth Petal will be released by Penguin Random House/Crown in January 2017.
Where the Bodies are Buried: The Power of Place in Crime Fiction [br] — Saturday 9:00 AM
Gerry Boyle is a crime novelist based in Maine. He’s the author of more than a dozen novels, including the acclaimed Jack McMorrow mystery series featuring ex-New York Times reporter Jack McMorrow and his social worker girlfriend Roxanne Masterson. Boyle recently published the 11th Jack McMorrow novel, Straw Man. Boyle is also the author of a second mystery series featuring rookie Portland cop Brandon Blake. A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Boyle came to Maine from Rhode Island to attend Colby College. He went on to work in Manhattan, but soon realized his heart was in the rural reaches of his adopted state. His newspaper work centered on crime scenes and courtrooms, and those dramatic experiences became the fodder for his fiction. Deadline, the first McMorrow mystery, was published in 1993 to national acclaim. Boyle followed his debut with more McMorrow adventures, which were published in six languages, and he built a loyal following for Jack and his retired Marine buddy, Clair. Boyle works from his home in a small village on a lake in central Maine, where he lives with his wife and first reader, Mary. When he isn’t writing fiction, he’s the editor of the Colby College magazine.
Mommy Dearest: Why Bad Moms Make for a Good Read — Saturday 1:00 PM
Myfanwy Collins lives in Newburyport. She has published a novel, Echolocation (2012), a collection of her short fiction, I Am Holding Your Hand (2013), and a YA novel, The Book of Laney (2015). She has also published fiction and essays in The Kenyon Review, The Potomac Review, The Cream City Review, AGNI, Quick Fiction, and other venues. For more information, please visit her web site: http://www.myfanwycollins.com
Where the Bodies are Buried: The Power of Place in Crime Fiction [br] — Saturday 9:00 AM
Ray Daniel is the award-winning author of Boston-based crime fiction. His short story, “Give Me a Dollar,” won a 2014 Derringer Award for short fiction, and his short story, “Driving Miss Rachel,” was chosen as a 2013 distinguished story by Otto Penzler, Editor of The Best American Mystery Stories 2013. Daniel’s short fiction has been published in the Level Best Books anthologies, Thin Ice, Blood Moon, Stone Cold, and Rogue Wave, as well as in the Anthony-nominated anthology, Murder at the Beach (Down and Out Books). His novels, Child Not Found, Corrupted Memory, and Terminated were published by Midnight Ink. Child Not Found is the third novel in the Tucker Mysteries. For more information, visit Ray online at raydanielmystery.com and follow him on Twitter @raydanielmystry.
Mommy Dearest: Why Bad Moms Make for a Good Read — Saturday 1:00 PM
Nadine Darling’s debut novel She Came From Beyond! was published in 2015 on the Overlook Press, and she lives in MA with her family, hard at work on a second.
Visit her at http://nadinedarling.weebly.com/ or at twitter.com/darling_nadine
New Fiction from Andre Dubus III — Saturday 1:00 PM [br]The Importance of Books in the Age of Digital Overload — Saturday 2:30 PM
Andre Dubus III is the author of six books: The Cage Keeper and Other Stories; Bluesman, and the New York Times bestsellers, House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days (soon to be a major motion picture) and his memoir, Townie, a #4 New York Times bestseller and a New York Times “Editors Choice”. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies, and his novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. Dirty Love, was published in the fall of 2013 and has been listed as a New York Times “Notable Book”, a New York Times Editors’ Choice”, a 2013 “Notable Fiction” choice from The Washington Post, and a Kirkus “Starred Best Book of 2013”. He has a new novel forthcoming called Gone So Long. Mr. Dubus has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, Two Pushcart Prizes, and a 2012 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children. Photo: David Le.
Collaborative Historical Fiction: It’s All About Teamwork — Saturday 2:30 PM
Award-winning historical novelist Anne Easter Smith’s love of history began during her first 20 years in England, where she grew up with London on her doorstep. Known for her period detail, she has twice given workshops on researching historical fiction and been a panelist at the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference and Literary Festival in Mexico. Anne’s six books focus on the Yorkist perspective of the Wars of the Roses, and grew from a life-long study of King Richard III and his family. Her five-book contract with Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone Books include The King’s Grace, which won the Romantic Times Best Historical Biography award in 2009 and Queen By Right, which was nominated in the same category in 2011, and the best-selling A Rose for the Crown. She has worked as a features editor for an upstate NY daily newspaper and has been published in several U.S. magazines. Anne has lived for 44 years in U.S., on both coasts, but is now settled in Newburyport, MA with her husband, Scott. When she is not writing, Anne can be found acting and directing at the Firehouse Center for the Arts or Actors Studio.
I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi — Saturday 1:00 PM
Abby Fabiaschi is a human rights advocate and the Director of the Her Future Coalition, an international nonprofit organization with a unique prosperity model that uplifts victims from sex trafficking and extreme abuse. In 2012 Abby resigned from her executive post in high tech to pursue a career in writing. I Liked My Life is her first novel. She and her family divide their time between West Hartford, Connecticut, and Park City, Utah. Learn more at www.abbyfabiaschi.com.
The Best American Short Stories — Saturday 10:30 AM [br]Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh — Saturday 2:30 PM
Jennifer Haigh’s novel, Heat and Light, was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Slate. Her previous books — News From Heaven, Faith, The Condition, Baker Towers, and Mrs. Kimble — have won the Massachusetts Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the PEN New England Award in fiction, and have been published in sixteen languages. Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. She lives in Boston and at www.jennifer-haigh.com. Photo by Rob Arnold.
Bottomland by Michelle Hoover — Saturday 11:00 AM [br]The Importance of Books in the Age of Digital Overload — Saturday 2:30 PM
Michelle Hoover is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University and teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut, The Quickening, was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read.” Her second novel, Bottomland, is the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection. She is a native of Iowa and lives in Boston.
The Baker’s Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan — Saturday 4:00 PM
Stephen P. Kiernan has had more that four million words in print: three novels (most recently The Baker’s Secret, out 5/2/17), two nonfiction books, and two decades as a newspaper journalist. He work has won more than 40 awards, including the Brechner Center’s freedom of Information Award and the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment. He lives in Vermont with his two amazing sons. Find him at www.stephenpkiernan.com.
Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt — Saturday 4:00 PM
Caroline Leavitt is the author of 11 novels including Cruel Beautiful World, an Indie Next Pick and Best Book of the Year from BlogCritics and the Pulpwood Queens. She is also the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow. Pictures of You was also one of the Best Books of 2011 from the San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and Kirkus Reviews, as well as being a Costco “Pennie’s Pick.” Is This Tomorrow was an Indie Next Pick, a Jewish Book Council Bookclub Pick, A Woman’s National Book Association 2013 Great Group Reads Selection, A San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick/Editor’s Choice, and the winner of an Audiofile Earphones Award.Caroline is a book critic for People Magazine, The Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. She teaches novel writing online at both Stanford and UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, as well as working with private clients. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Redbook, Real Simple, More Magazine, New York magazine, and more. The Recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Fiction, she is also an honorable mention winner of the Goldenberg Fiction Prize, and a semifinalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab Competition. She lives with her husband, the writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their teenaged son, in New York City’s unofficial 6th borough, Hoboken, NJ. She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com
Mercury by Margot Livesey — Saturday 9:00 AM
Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She has taught in numerous writing programs including Emerson College, Boston University, Bowdoin College and the Warren Wilson MFA program, and is the author of a collection of stories and seven novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture and The Flight of Gemma Hardy. She lives in Cambridge, MA and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her eighth novel, Mercury, was published in September, 2016. The Hidden Machinery, a book about the craft of writing, will be published in 2017.
Mommy Dearest: Why Bad Moms Make for a Good Read — Saturday 1:00 PM
Carla Panciera has published two collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press) and No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera). Her collection of short stories, Bewildered, received AWP’s 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in several journals including The New England Review, Nimrod, The Chattahoochee Review, Painted Bride, and Carolina Quarterly. A high school English teacher, Carla lives in Rowley, MA.
Collaborative Historical Fiction: It’s All About Teamwork — Saturday 2:30 PM
Sophie Perinot is an award-winning, author of stories set against the past but exploring issues and feelings so essentially human that they transcend any particular era. Her novel The Sister Queens delves into the compelling bond between sisters who become 13th century queens of France and England, and her most recent novel Médicis Daughter takes readers into the intrigue-riven French court and the complicated mother/daughter relationship between the dangerous Catherine de Médicis and the rebellious Princess Marguerite. Perinot is a founding member of The H Team, a group of historical novelists creating collaborative works. The group debuted with A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii, a novel in six parts credited as the first true continuity in the historical fiction genre. When Sophie is not traveling to intriguing corners of the past, she can be found at home in Great Falls, Virginia with her three children, two dogs, two cats, and one husband. Learn more about Sophie and her work at www.sophieperinot.com.
The Best American Short Stories — Saturday 10:30 AM [br]The Daylight Marriage by Heidi Pitlor — Saturday 1:00 PM
Heidi Pitlor is the author of the novels The Birthdays and The Daylight Marriage. A former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, she has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. Pitlor’s other writing has been published in Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Labor Day: The True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers, and elsewhere. She currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Regis University in Denver. She is on the boards of PEN/New England and 826 Boston, and lives with her twin daughter and son, and her husband outside Boston.
Mommy Dearest: Why Bad Moms Make for a Good Read — Saturday 1:00 PM
Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer whose newest novel is FOLLY COVE. Connect with her at www.authorhollyrobinson.com, on Twitter at @hollyrob1 and on Facebook. [clearboth]
Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo — Saturday 10:30 AM [br]The Importance of Books in the Age of Digital Overload — Saturday 2:30 PM
Richard Russo knows small town America. This masterful novelist has an uncanny sense of the way life works in the gritty industrial towns of the American Northeast. From the gossip and the resentments to the people and the cafes, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Russo chronicles blue-collar America in ways constantly surprising and utterly revealing. Russo’s previous works include eight novels, three collections of short stories and a memoir. His 2001 novel, Empire Falls, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was also adapted into an HBO mini-series, starring Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Helen Hunt. His latest novel, Everybody’s Fool, came out in 2016. Russo earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s in fine arts, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. He has two daughters and lives with his wife in Portland, Maine. Photo © Elena Seibert.
The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck — Saturday 2:30 PM
Jessica Shattuck is the award-winning author of The Hazards of Good Breeding, a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and of Perfect Life. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, Wired, and The Believer, among others. A graduate of Harvard University, she received her MFA from Columbia University. Shattuck now lives with her husband and three children in Brookline, MA.
Georgia by Dawn Tripp — Saturday 9:00 AM
Dawn Tripp is the author of Georgia: a novel of Georgia O’Keeffe. A National Bestseller and finalist for the New England Book Award, Georgia has been described as “complex and original” by the New York Times Book Review and “magical and provocative” by USA Today. Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, Tripp is the author of three previous novels, Moon Tide, The Season of Open Water, and Game of Secrets. Her essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, The Rumpus, Psychology Today, and NPR. She lives in Massachusetts with her family. www.dawntripp.com
Collaborative Historical Fiction: It’s All About Teamwork — Saturday 2:30 PM
Heather Webb is the author of historical novels Becoming Josephine and Rodin’s Lover, which have sold in six countries and have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,Cosmopolitan, Elle, France Magazine, and more, as well as received national starred reviews. Rodin’s Lover was a Goodreads Pick of the month in 2015. Up and coming, Last Christmas in Paris, an epistolary love story set during WWI will release October 24, 2017 from HarperCollins. Heather is also a professional freelance editor, foodie, and travel addict.
Michael C. White presents Resting Places — Saturday 9:00 AM
Michael C. White is the author of six previous novels: Beautiful Assassin (Harper Collins, 2010), which won the 2011 Connecticut Book Award for Fiction; Soul Catcher, which was a Booksense and Historical Novels Review selection, as well as a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award; A Brother’s Blood, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers nominee; The Blind Side of the Heart, an Alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection; A Dream of Wolves, which received starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly; and The Garden of Martyrs, also a Connecticut Book Award finalist. A collection of his short stories, Marked Men, was published by the University of Missouri Press. He has also published over 50 short stories in national magazines and journals, and has won the Advocate Newspapers Fiction Award. The founding editor of the yearly fiction anthology American Fiction as well as the magazine Dogwood, White is the founder and director of Fairfield University’s low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in Madison, Connecticut, with his wife Reni and their two Labs, Henry and Falstaff. He writes in a converted chicken coop in the woods behind his house.
The Best American Short Stories — Saturday 10:30 AM
Joan Wickersham’s The News from Spain was named one of the year’s best fiction picks by National Public Radio, Kirkus, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Her memoir The Suicide Index was a National Book award finalist. Her work has appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Agni, Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and many other publications, and she is a regular op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe. She has taught at Harvard and Emerson, and currently teaches in the MFA program at Bennington.
The One-in-a-Million Boy — Saturday 10:00 AM
Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright. Her most recent novel, The One-in-a-Million Boy, earned international interest, with 18 foreign editions in 17 languages. She is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the Maine Literary Award. Her novel Any Bitter Thing was an ABA bestseller and Book Sense Top Ten pick. Her other fiction includes Ernie’s Ark, which has been excerpted on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and selected by several towns and cities as their “One Book, One Community” read; My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award; and Secret Language, her first novel. Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been featured on public radio. She also writes books for writers and teachers. Her nonfiction has appeared in Oprah, New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and many other publications. Her recent play, Papermaker, enjoyed an extended debut run at Portland Stage in Portland, Maine, its bestselling play ever.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life — Saturday 9:00 AM [br]The Best American Short Stories — Saturday 10:30 AM
Steve Yarbrough is the author of ten books. His new novel The Unmade World will be published in January of 2018. His other novels are The Realm of Last Chances, Safe from the Neighbors, The End of California, Prisoners of War, Visible Spirits and The Oxygen Man. He has also published several story collections. The recipient of numerous awards, he teaches at Emerson College.
Gerry Boyle
Myfanwy Collins
Ray Daniel
Andre Dubus III
Abby Fabiaschi
Jennifer Haigh
Michelle Hoover
Stephen P. Kiernan
Margot Livesey
Sophie Perinot
Heidi Pitlor
Jessica Shattuck
Heather Webb
Michael C. White
Joan Wickersham
Steve Yarbrough