2011 Fiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Linda Barnes

Building a Mystery - Saturday 1:00 PM

Linda Barnes, winner of both the Anthony and the American Mystery awards, has written 16 novels, 12 featuring 6’1” redheaded Boston private investigator, Carlotta Carlyle. Her most recent novel, Lie Down With the Devil, was named one of the best mysteries of 2008 by Publisher’s Weekly.

Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry reads from The Map of True Places - Saturday 9:00 AM

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 and her husband co-founded an innovative company that creates award-winning word, visual and logic puzzles. In recent years, she has written books for the Beacon Street Girls, a fictional series for ‘tweens. Happily married, Barry lives with her husband and her “only child,” a 15-year-old Golden Retriever named Byzantium. Her first novel, The Lace Reader, a New York Times and international bestseller, has been translated into more than 30 languages. Barry is the first American Writer to win the Woman’s International Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award. New England Book Festival’s 2010 award for fiction. She is the 2010 Recipient of the Ragdale Foundation’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship. Her second novel, The Map of True Places came out in May of 2010.

Elizabeth Benedict

Mentors, Muses & Monsters - Saturday 11:00 AM

Elizabeth Benedict is a novelist, journalist, teacher of creative writing, editor, and writing coach. She has published five acclaimed novels, a classic book on writing fiction, and hundreds of reviews, essays, and magazine articles for major publications. She is the editor of the anthology, Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (Free Press/Simon & Schuster). Her novels have established her reputation as a writer who "specializes in the subterranean currents of modern relationships, the secret motivations and betrayals that underlie everyday interactions" (Newsday). Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan chose her previous novel, the bestseller Almost as one of her top five novels of 2001. Her first novel, Slow Dancing, was shortlisted for the National Book Award. She is also the author of several other novels and of The Joy of Writing Sex, which is used widely in writing programs. She's teaches now at Brandeis and has taught fiction and non-fiction writing at Barnard, Columbia, the New School, Princeton, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Swarthmore College. Two of her essays were chosen as Notable Essays in the Best American Essays collections.
Photo Credit:  Emma Dodge Hanson.

Gerry Boyle

Building a Mystery - Saturday 1:00 PM

Gerry Boyle is a crime novelist based in Maine. Boyle is the author of eleven novels, including the acclaimed Jack McMorrow mystery series, featuring ex-New York Times reporter Jack McMorrow and his social worker girlfriend Roxanne Masterson. Boyle also is the author of a second mystery series featuring rookie cop Brandon Blake. The second novel in that series, Port City Black and White, will be published in September 2011. Boyle is at work on the tenth Jack McMorrow novel, to be published in 2012. A former crime reporter and newspaper columnist, Boyle is the editor of the alumni magazine of Colby College, his alma mater. He lives with his wife Mary in a small town on a lake in central Maine.

Jay Cantor

Mentors, Muses & Monsters - Saturday 11:00 AM

Drawing Conclusions – Storytelling and the Graphic Novel - Saturday 4:00 PM

Jay Cantor is the author of three novels, The Death of Che Guevara, Krazy Kat, and Great Neck, two books of essays, The Space Between: Literature and Politics and On Giving Birth to One’s Own Mother. A MacArthur Prize Fellow, Cantor teaches at Tufts University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Melinda Marble, and their daughter, Grace. Aaron and Ahmed is his first graphic novel.

Jamie Cox Robertson

An Uncommon Heroine - Saturday 1:00 PM

Jamie Cox Robertson is the author of two books. A Literary Paris: Hemingway, Colette, Sedaris and Others on the Uncommon Lure of the City of Light was released in August of 2010. Her second book, An Uncommon Heroine: Scarlett, Edna, Sula and More Than 20 Other of the Most Remarkable Women in Literature, was released in October 2010. She holds a graduate degree in literature and teaches writing and literature at The University of Arizona in Tucson. Jamie has taught at Suffolk University in Boston, Webster University in St. Louis, the Chautauqua Institute in New York, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is currently completely a novel, tentatively titled Pretending, and lives with her husband and daughter in Tucson, Arizona.

Alexander Danner

Drawing Conclusions – Storytelling and the Graphic Novel - Saturday 4:00 PM

Alexander Danner writes comics. His most recent series is “Gingerbread Houses,” a retelling of Hansel and Gretel illustrated by Edward J. Grug III. “Gingerbread Houses” and other fairy tales can be found at www.PictureStoryTheater.com. Danner’s other stories and experiments can be found at www.TwentySevenLetters.com. He teaches Writing the Graphic Novel at Emerson College and is co-author of the textbook Character Design for Graphic Novels.

Anita Diamant

Anita Diamant reads from Day After Night - Saturday 2:30 PM

Anita Diamant has written 12 books, including the international bestselling novel, The Red Tent. Her other novels include Good Harbor, The Last Days of Dogtown and, most recently, Day After Night, which tells the story of four young Jewish women Holocaust survivors who make their way to the land of Israel in 1945; Publisher’s Weekly calls it “compulsively readable.” Diamant is a lecturer, award-winning journalist, and the author of six non-fiction guides to contemporary Jewish life, beginning with The New Jewish Wedding, and a collection of personal essays. Pitching My Tent: On Marriage, Motherhood, Friendship and Other Leaps of Faith. Diamant is also the founder and president of Mayyim Hayyim, Living Waters Community Mikveh and Family Education Center, in Newton, Massachusetts, a 21st century center for Jewish learning, ritual, community and culture.
www.anitadiamant.com

Anne Easter Smith

An Uncommon Heroine - Saturday 1:00 PM

Anne Easter Smith’s love of medieval English history began during her childhood in England, where she grew up with London on her doorstep. Her five-book contract with Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone Books is a series about the York family during the Wars of the Roses. Anne’s third book, The King’s Grace won the Romantic Times Best Historical Biography award in 2009 and her fourth, Queen By Right arrived on bookstore shelves last month. The final book in the York saga will tell the story of Edward IV’s “merriest” mistress, Jane Shore. Anne has lived for 42 years in US and on both coasts but now lives in Newburyport, MA with her husband, Scott.

Hallie Ephron

Building a Mystery - Saturday 1:00 PM

Hallie Ephron (www.hallieephron.com) is a writer and book reviewer. Her suspense novel Never Tell a Lie was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and for the Salt Lake Libraries Readers Choice Award, and won the David Award for best mystery of 2009. It was optioned for film and translated into seven languages. Her new novel, Come and Find Me, is being published by William Morrow (April, 2011). A book lover, Hallie is also an award-winning crime fiction book reviewer for The Boston Globe and author of The Bibliophile's Devotional. Her Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock ‘Em Dead with Style was nominated for Edgar and Anthony awards.

Sherri Frank Mazzotta

The Secret of Suspense - Saturday 9:00 AM

Sherri Frank Mazzotta has worked in medical publishing most of her life. She has been a medical journal Publisher and an Editorial Director for CME programs. Currently, she creates tools that provide the information and support patients need to make sound medical decisions. She studied creative writing at Emerson College and joined the Festival Steering Committee in 2010.

Julia Glass

Mentors, Muses & Monsters - Saturday 11:00 AM

The Widower’s Tale read by Julia Glass - Saturday 1:00PM

Julia Glass is the author of the novels Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction; The Whole World Over; and The Widower's Tale. Her third book, I See You Everywhere, a collection of linked stories, won the 2009 SUNY John Gardner Fiction Award. She has also won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Other awards for her fiction include the Sense of Place Award, the Tobias Wolff Award, and the Pirate’s Alley Medal for Best Novella. Her personal essays appear in several anthologies, most recently in Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book (edited by Sean Manning). Julia lives with her two sons and their father in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Photo Credit: Dennis Cowley

Áine Greaney

Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney - Saturday 10:00 AM

Born and raised in County Mayo, Áine Greaney is a writer and editor living on Boston’s North Shore. She is the author of the novel The Big House and the short story collection The Sheep Breeders Dance. In addition, she has written several award-winning short stories and numerous feature articles for the Irish Independent, the Irish Voice, Creative Nonfiction, and the Literary Review, among others. Her latest novel, Dance Lessons will be released on April 1 by Syracuse University Press.

Paul Harding

Tinkers read by Paul Harding - Saturday 10:00 AM

Paul Harding graduated from the University of Massachusetts and was a drummer for the band Cold Water Flat before earning his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught writing at Harvard and the University of Iowa. A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, Harding now lives near Boston with his wife and two sons. His first novel, Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Paul is working on his second novel, to be published in the summer of 2012.

Leslie Hendrickson

Write What You Know: Personal History in Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Leslie Hendrickson is a New York City-based writer whose work has appeared in amNewYork, ARTNews, City Arts, Columbia Magazine, FamilyCircle, Jane magazine, NYMag.com, 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 five triathlons, but has yet to finish Moby Dick. www.thegreatleslie.com

Ann Hood

Ann Hood reads from The Red Thread - Saturday 2:30 PM

Ann Hood’s novels include Waiting to Vanish, Three-Legged Horse, and Something Blue, Places to Stay the Night, The Properties of Water, Ruby, and The Knitting Circle. She has also written a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time; a book on the craft of writing, Creating Character Emotions; and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life. 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. Her most recent novel, The Red Thread, was published in May 2010. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their children.

Michelle Hoover

Write What You Know: Personal History in Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Descended from four generations of Iowa farmers, Michelle Hoover teaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street. She has published fiction in Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and Best New American Voices. She is a finalist for New Letter’s Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Prize and has been a Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her new novel is The Quickening. For more information visit www.michellehoover.net

Lee Houck

Write What You Know: Personal History in Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Lee Houck was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. His debut novel, Yield, was the winner of Project QueerLit 2008, and was published by Kensington Books in September 2010. His writing appears in numerous anthologies in the U.S. and Australia, including From Boys to Men and Hair, and in two limited-edition chapbooks: Collection (2006) and Warnings (2009). He is currently at work on a new novel, and blogs at www.GrammarPiano.com

Daphne Kalotay

Daphne Kalotay's Russian Winter - Saturday 11:00 AM

Daphne Kalotay is the author of the newly published novel Russian Winter (HarperCollins), which was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and is forthcoming in 17 translated editions. Her fiction collection Calamity and Other Stories (KnopfDoubleday 2005) was a Poets & Writers “Notable Book” and short-listed for the 2005 Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, Daphne holds an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Modern & Contemporary Literature, both from Boston University, and has taught literature and creative writing at BU, Skidmore College, Grub Street, and Middlebury College.

Pam Lewis

The Secret of Suspense - Saturday 9:00 AM

Pam Lewis' new novel A Young Wife will be published on June 14 by Simon and Schuster. She is also the author of the novels Perfect Family and Speak Softly, She Can Hear, and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and various literary magazines. She lives in Storrs, Connecticut.

Stephen McCauley

Stephen McCauley – Insignificant Others - Saturday 2:30 PM

Stephen McCauley is the author of six novels, including The Object of My Affection and Alternatives to Sex. His most recent, Insignificant Others, was published in 2010. His stories, articles, and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harpers, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. Two of his novels have been made into feature films. He is currently Writer in Residence at Brandeis University.

Cammie McGovern

The Secret of Suspense - Saturday 9:00 AM

Cammie McGovern was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and has received numerous prizes for her short fiction. Her stories have appeared in several magazines and journals, and she is the author of two novels, Eye Contact, which was published in 2006, and The Art of Seeing. Her latest novel, Neighborhood Watch, is a gripping tale of a woman, wrongly sentenced for a crime and then exonerated by DNA evidence, who must find the true killer and redeem herself in the eyes of her community. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She is one of the founders of Whole Children, a resource center that runs after-school classes and programs for children with special needs.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Meg Mitchell Moore reads from The Arrivals - Saturday 4:00 PM

Meg Mitchell Moore's first novel The Arrivals will be published in 2011. She worked for several years as a freelance journalist for a variety of business and consumer magazines. She lives in Newburyport, Mass., with her husband and their three young daughters, and is working on her second novel.

Howard Frank Mosher

Transforming History into Fiction: The Story of a Born Liar - A Slide Show, Talk, and Reading of Walking to Gatlinburg - Saturday 2:30 PM

Howard Frank Mosher is the author of ten novels and a travel memoir. Born in the Catskill Mountains in 1942, Mosher has lived in Vermont’s fabled Northeast Kingdom since 1964. He has won many awards for his fiction, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, the American Civil Liberties Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the New England Book Award. Three of his novels, Disappearances, A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North, have been made into acclaimed feature movies by the Vermont independent filmmaker Jay Craven. Mosher and his wife of forty-four years, Phillis, have a grown son and daughter. His Civil War-era novel, Walking to Gatlinburg, due out in March 2010, chronicles the nightmarish odyssey of 17-year-old Morgan Kinneson from northern Vermont to Tennessee during 1864.

Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl reads from The Last Dickens - Saturday 9:00 AM

Mentors, Muses & Monsters - Saturday 11:00 AM

Matthew Pearl is the author of the novels The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens. His books have been New York Times bestsellers and international bestsellers translated into more than 30 languages. His nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Slate.com. He has been heard on shows including NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition Sunday," and his books have been featured on Good Morning America and CBS Sunday Morning. Matthew Pearl grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School. He has also taught literature and creative writing at Harvard University and Emerson College, and has been a Visiting Lecturer in law and literature at Harvard Law School. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Steve Yarbrough

Write What You Know: Personal History in Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Steve Yarbrough is the author of three story collections and four previous novels: The Oxygen Man, which received the Mississippi Author’s Award, the California Book Award, and an award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, Visible Spirits, Prisoners of War, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award, and The End of California. His work has been translated into Japanese, Dutch and Polish. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1999-2000, Steve was the John and Renee Grisham Visiting Southern Writer in residence at Ole Miss. A professor of creative writing for many years at California State University, Fresno, Yarbrough recently joined the faculty in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. He has two daughters: Tosha, twenty-one, and Lena, nineteen. His wife, Ewa, a literary translator, is from Poland, and both of their daughters, though born in this country, are bilingual. Steve and his family live in Boston and Krakow. His new novel is Safe From the Neighbors.