2008 Fiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Annecy Báez

Weaving Stories That Wow You - Saturday 11:00 AM
Annecy Baez Reads from My Daughter’s Eyes - Saturday 2:00 PM

Annecy Báez writes poetry and fiction. Her most recent story, “The Red Shoes,” was translated by Ruth Herrera and appeared in Spanish as “Tacones Rojos” in Caudal, a literary journal in the Dominican Republic. Her story “The Silence of Angels” appeared in Callaloo, a literary journal based at Johns Hopkins University. Other works have appeared in Vinyl Donuts, an anthology from the National Book Foundation, as well as Brújula/Compass and Tertuliando/Hanging Out, a bilingual literary anthology published by Hunter Caribbean Studies and Latinarte. She is a member of Daisy Cocco De Filippis’s Latina writer’s group, La Tertulia. Annecy Báez is the winner of the 2007 Miguel Marmol Prize for her collection of short stories, My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories.

Elisabeth Brink

The Writer’s Progress: Finishing Touches - Saturday 12:00 PM

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.

Andre Dubus III

Andre Dubus III Reads from The Garden of Last Days - Saturday 10:00 AM

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

Herstory: Women Writing About Women - Saturday 2:30 PM

Anne Easter Smith is a native of England who has lived in the United States for thirty-three years. Her love of English history goes back to age ten, 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, which was inspired by her fascination with Richard III. Anne began her writing career as a freelancer for a small monthly publication in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1980. From 1986 until 1995, she was the features editor of the daily newspaper in Plattsburgh. A Rose for the Crown was published in March 2006 by Simon & Schuster and has been reprinted three times for a total of more than 50,000 copies. Her second book, Daughter of York, is now on the bookshelves after launching at the Jabberwocky in February, and she has a contract for two more books, all with Touchstone Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.

Áine Greaney

The Writer’s Progress: Finishing Touches - Saturday 12:00 PM

Born and brought up in County Mayo, Ireland, Áine Greaney now lives and writes in Newburyport. Her short fiction and personal essays have been published in numerous U.S. and Irish literary journals and anthologies and have won several awards. Her novel, The Big House, was published in June 2003, and her short story collection, The Sheepbreeders Dance, was published in September 2006. Her second novel, Dance Lessons, is under consideration. She teaches her own writing workshops at various schools, libraries, and arts facilities, including Emerson College, the New Hampshire Writers Project, and the Seacoast Writers Association. She was on the 2007 faculty of the Cape Cod Writers Conference. A regular public speaker and panelist, Greaney has presented at many facilities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Ireland.

JoeAnn Hart

Laughing Out Loud: Authors Who Crack Us Up - Saturday 9:00 AM
JoeAnn Hart Reads from Addled - Saturday 11:15 AM

JoeAnn Hart is the author of the social satire Addled (Little, Brown, 2007), which involves the invasion of Canada Geese at a posh country club west of Boston, and the humans who do battle with them.  Her short fiction and essays have appeared in many literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner and The MacGuffin, and she is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe Magazine.  She lives with her family on a small farm in Gloucester.  To find out more about her and her work, please visit JoeAnnHart.com.

Dyke Hendrickson

Memoirs on Fatherhood: From Family to Faith and Fly-Fishing - Saturday 9:00 AM
Investigating Crimes of the Century - Saturday 2:00 PM

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.

Ann Hood

Weaving Stories That Wow You - Saturday 11:00 AM
Ann Hood Reads from The Knitting Circle - Saturday 3:00 PM

Ann Hood’s most recent novel, The Knitting Circle, was published in 2007. Her other novels include Waiting to Vanish (Bantam, 1988), Three-Legged Horse (Bantam, 1989), Something Blue (Bantam, 1991), Places to Stay the Night (Doubleday, 1993), The Properties of Water (Doubleday, 1995), and Ruby (Picador, 1998). She has also written a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time (Picador, 1999); a book on the craft of writing, Creating Character Emotions (Story Press, 1998); and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life (Norton, 2004). Most recently, her essays and short stories have appeared in Good Housekeeping, The New York Times, Ladies Home Journal, More, Tin House, Ploughshares, and The Paris Review. Hood has won a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and two Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their children.

Joseph Hurka

Weaving Stories That Wow You - Saturday 11:00 AM
Joseph Hurka Reads from Before - Saturday 4:00 PM

Joseph Hurka is the author of the novel Before (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press) and the memoir Fields of Light, winner of the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award. Hurka was educated at Bradford College, where he studied with the short story master Andre Dubus, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His short stories have been published in numerous literary quarterlies. He is currently an editor for the Pushcart Prize and teaches at Tufts University and Emerson College.

David Maine

From King Lear to King Kong - Saturday 10:00 AM

David Maine grew up in Farmington, Connecticut; attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona; and worked in the mental health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He taught English in Morocco from 1995 to 1998 and has lived in Pakistan since then. He resides in Lahore with his wife, the novelist Uzma Aslam Khan. He is the author of four novels: The Preservationist; Fallen; The Book of Samson; and his most recent work, Monster, 1959.

Mameve Medwed

Laughing Out Loud: Authors Who Crack Us Up - Saturday 9:00 AM
Mameve Medwed Reads from Of Men and Their Mothers - Saturday 12:00 PM

Mameve Medwed is the author of six novels: Of Men and Their Mothers, Mail, Host Family, The End of an Error, How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (which was selected as a Fiction Honor Book for 2007 by the Massachusetts Book Awards). Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in many publications, including Yankee, Redbook, Missouri Review, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Newsday. She and her husband have two grown sons and live in Cambridge.

Patricia O’Brien

Patricia O’Brien Reads from Harriet and Isabella - Saturday 11:00 AM
Herstory: Women Writing About Women - Saturday 2:30 PM

Patricia O’Brien’s award-winning career has spanned the worlds of fiction and nonfiction books, journalism, politics, and education. Her latest book is Harriet and Isabella, a novel about Harriet Beecher Stowe that was published by Simon and Schuster in January 2008. She is also the author of a second historical novel, The Glory Cloak, a book about the experiences of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton as nurses in the Civil War. Her other works of fiction include The Candidate’s Wife, The Ladies’ Lunch, and Good Intentions. She is the co-author, along with Ellen Goodman, of a New York Times bestseller titled I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship In Women’s Lives. Her earlier nonfiction books include The Woman Alone and Staying Together: Marriages That Work. From 1976 to 1987 she was a political correspondent and columnist for Knight-Ridder newspapers in Washington, DC. From journalism she switched to politics, becoming press secretary for Governor Michael Dukakis when he ran for president in 1987. She has been a commentator for CBS-TV’s Morning News and for the CBS-Radio program Spectrum as well as for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She has written for a number of magazines, including Esquire, Working Woman, Notre Dame Magazine, Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her book reviews have appeared in The New York Times. She has four grown daughters and lives with her husband, Frank Mankiewicz, in Washington, DC.

Julia Older

Herstory: Women Writing About Women - Saturday 2:30 PM

The twenty-fourth woman to walk the Appalachian Trail, Julia Older co-authored her first book, Appalachian Odyssey (Stephen Greene Press), with hiker-writer Steve Sherman. The proceeds from Menus à Trois (Penguin) and Endometriosis (Scribner) fed Older while she wrote her first novel, The Island Queen, about Isles of Shoals writer Celia Thaxter. This Desired Place (Appledore), the swashbuckling prequel to Older’s Shoals Trilogy, won the 2007 gold medal for Best Northeast Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The author of 25 books, Older has worked and written in France, Italy, Mexico, and Brazil and has received fellowships to the Iowa Workshop, the Instituto Allende, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Older’s poetry includes a verse drama, Tales of the François Vase, which was broadcast by Radio Works over 60 NPR stations, and Tahirih Unveiled, a verse-novel honoring 19th century poet and women’s rights activist Tahirih of Persia. Although Julia lives in secluded rural New Hampshire, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Connecticut Review, Poets & Writers, Sisters Of The Earth, and other publications.

Nina R. Schneider

Herstory: Women Writing About Women - Saturday 2:30 PM

Nina R. Schneider teaches writing and literature at Bentley College in Waltham. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College and an M.S. in communications from Simmons College. Her short fiction has appeared in Quick Fiction and online in Pindeldyboz and New Vilna Review. She co-founded the Norton Institute for Continuing Education in collaboration with Wheaton College.

Sergio Troncoso

The Latino Boom - Saturday 10:00 AM
Sergio Troncoso Reads from The Nature of Truth - Saturday 1:00 PM

Sergio Troncoso was born in El Paso, Texas, and now lives in New York City. After graduating from Harvard College, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University. Troncoso’s stories have been featured in many anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (W.W. Norton), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (Pearson/Longman Publishing), Once Upon a Cuento (Curbstone Press), Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas-Mexican Literature (University of New Mexico Press), City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature (University of Georgia Press), and New World: Young Latino Writers (Dell Publishing). In 1999 his book of short stories, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories (University of Arizona Press), won the Premio Aztlán for the best book by a new Chicano writer, and the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association. His novel, The Nature of Truth (Northwestern University Press), was published in 2003.