2012 Fiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Gary Braver

Technology and Terror: Mystery Writers on the Cutting Edge – Saturday 9:00 AM

Gary Goshgarian is a professor of English at Northeastern, and under the pen name, Gary Braver, the author of 8 critically acclaimed thrillers including Elixir, Gray Matter, and Flashback, the only thriller to have won a prestigious Massachusetts Book Award. His latest book, Tunnel Vision, published this past summer, centers on a Northeastern graduate student who gets involved in a secret project involving near-death experience. The book was named one of the “best books of the summer” by WGBH’s “The Emily Rooney Show” and was praised by legendary author Ray Bradbury as “a wonderfully frightening and insightful tale." Gary Braver’s books have been celebrated for their high-concepts, careful craftsmanship, well-rounded characters, and page-turning momentum. They have been translated into 7 languages, and three have been optioned for movies. He is the only writer to have three books listed on the top-10 highest customer-rated thrillers on Amazon.com at the same time. As Gary Goshgarian, he is an award-winning English professor at Northeastern where he teaches Science Fiction, Modern Bestsellers, Horror Fiction, and Fiction Writing.

Myfanwy Collins

Authors and Editors: Working Together – Saturday 1:00 PM

Echolocation by Myfanwy Collins – Saturday 4:00 PM

Myfanwy Collins now lives in Byfield,Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Cream City Review, Quick Fiction, and Potomac Review. Her debut novel, Echolocation, is forthcoming from Engine Books in March 2012. A collection of her short fiction, I Am Holding Your Hand, is forthcoming from PANK Little Books in August 2012. For more information, please visit her web site: http://www.myfanwycollins.com

Anita Diamant

Truth in Fiction: Telling Her Story in History. – Saturday 1:00 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

Matthew Dicks

Get Onboard the Online Book Scene:
How Social Media Connects Readers, Authors, and Reviewers – Saturday 9:00 AM

Authors and Editors: Working Together – Saturday 1:00 PM

Matthew Dicks is the author of Something Missing, Unexpectedly, Milo and the upcoming Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. When he is not hunched over a computer screen, he fills his days as an elementary school teacher, a wedding DJ, a heathen minister and a life coach. He is married to friend and fellow teacher, Elysha, and they have a two-year old daughter named Clara. Matthew grew up in the small farm town of Blackstone, MA where he made a name for himself by dying twice before the age of eighteen and becoming the first student in his high school to be suspended for inciting riot upon himself.

Anne Easter Smith

Truth in Fiction: Telling Her Story in History. – 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.  Her most recent book, Queen By Right, is a fictional biography of Cecily Neville, the matriarch of the house of York. The final book in the York saga will tell the story of Edward IV’s “merriest” mistress, Jane Shore. Anne has lived for 43 years in US and on both coasts but now lives in Newburyport, MA with her husband, Scott.  She is pleased to be part of the festival again this year. www.anneeastersmith.com

Margaret George

Truth in Fiction: Telling Her Story in History. – Saturday 1:00 PM

Elizabeth I: Margaret George Reads – Saturday 4:00 PM

Margaret George is the author of six biographical novels, set in the ancient world and Tudor England. They are: The Autobiography of Henry VIII (1986), Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1992), The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997), Mary Called Magdalene (2002), Helen of Troy (2006), and Elizabeth I (2011). All of these have been New York Times bestsellers. The Cleopatra novel was made into a 1999 ABC-TV miniseries, and clips from it are featured in the new exhibit “The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt”, currently on tour.  She is also the author of a children’s book about turtles, Lucille Lost.

William Giraldi

William Giraldi’s Busy Monsters – Saturday 9:00 AM

Boston’s Literary Magazine Scene – Saturday 2:30 PM

William Giraldi is the author of the novel Busy Monsters and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. He teaches at Boston University and is Senior Fiction Editor for the journal AGNI.

Áine Greaney

Aine Greaney Reads from Dance Lessons – Saturday 2:30 PM

Born and raised in County Mayo, Áine Greaney is a writer, editor and teacher 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 Creative Nonfiction, Under the Sun, Natural Bridge, the Fish Anthology, the Literary Review, Salon.com, the Boston Globe Magazine and others. Her latest novel, Dance Lessons (Syracuse University Press) was released in April 2011 and her instructional book, Writer with a Day Job (Writers Digest Books) was published in June 2011. She's currently at work on her third novel. For more info: www.ainegreaney.com

Laura Harrington

Alice Bliss – Saturday 10:00 AM

Laura Harrington is the 2008 Kleban Award winner for most promising librettist in American Musical Theatre. Harrington has twice won both the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award in playwriting and the Clauder Competition for best new play in New England. Additional awards include a Boston IRNE Award for Best New Play, a Bunting Institute Fellowship at Harvard/ Radcliffe, a Whiting Foundation Grant-in-Aid, the Joseph Kesselring Award for Drama, a New England Emmy, and a Quebec Cinemateque Award. Laura teaches playwriting at MIT where she was awarded the 2009 Levitan Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She is also a frequent guest artist at Tufts, Harvard, Wellesley, and the University of Iowa. Laura has recently published her debut novel, Alice Bliss, with Pamela Dorman Books, Viking/ Penguin. Alice Bliss is a "People Pick" with 4 out of 4 stars, has been chosen as "The Best Books of the Summer" by Entertainment Weekly, and has been selected for the Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" program. Read more at: www.lauraharringtonbooks.com

Lily King

Father of the Rain: Lily King – Saturday 10:00 AM

Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour (1999), The English Teacher (2005) and Father of the Rain (2010). The Pleasing Hour won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The English Teacher, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. Father of the Rain won the New England Book Award and the Maine Fiction Award, and was a New York Times Editors' Choice. Lily is also the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Award. Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Ploughshares and Glimmer Train, and her reviews have been published in the New York Times and the Washington Post. She lives in Maine with her husband and children.

Margot Livesey

Margot Livesey reads from The Flight of Gemma Hardy – Saturday 1:00 PM

Boston’s Literary Magazine Scene – Saturday 2:30 PM

Margot Livesey grew up in a boys' private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street. Her seventh novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, will be published by HarperCollins in January 2012. Margot is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA, and goes back to London and Scotland whenever she can.

Meg Mitchell Moore

Meg Mitchell Moore reads from So Far Away – Saturday 2:30 PM

Meg Mitchell Moore worked for many years as a journalist for a variety of consumer and business magazines. Her debut novel, The Arrivals, came out in 2011 from Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and will be published in paperback in May 2012. Her second novel, So Far Away, will be published in May 2012, also by Reagan Arthur Books, and takes place in and around Newburyport. An avid runner and busy mother, Meg currently lives in Newburyport with her husband and their three daughters. 

Peter Orner

Love and Shame and Love: A Novel – Saturday 11:00 AM C A N C E L L E D

Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is a graduate of the University of Michigan. He received a law degree from Northeastern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Orner is the author of a novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006) which was the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize and a story collection, Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin/ Mariner, 2001). Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award. Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He is a currently visiting fiction faculty at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. His new novel, Love and Shame and Love, will be out from Little, Brown in November, 2011.

Daniel Palmer

Technology and Terror: Mystery Writers on the Cutting Edge – Saturday 9:00 AM

Daniel Palmer is the author of the award-winning thriller DELIRIOUS and HELPLESS (Kensington 2012), which has received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Before directing his talents to storytelling, Daniel was a musician--he has recorded two CDs and licensed his songs for commercial use--and was also an e-commerce pioneer, helping to build first generation websites for Barnes & Noble and other popular brands.

Daniel grew up around great stories; his dad is legendary thriller writer Michael Palmer. He currently lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two children.

Michael Palmer

Technology and Terror: Mystery Writers on the Cutting Edge – Saturday 9:00 AM

Michael Palmer is the author of 17 novels of medical and political suspense, all New York Times Best Sellers. His books have been translated into forty languages. Palmer was educated at Wesleyan University and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. His most recent novel, Oath of Office deals with genetically modified, trans-species corn. His novel Extreme Measures was made into the hit film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Palmer also works as with the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Physician Health Services, helping doctors with physical and mental illness, as well as drug dependence and alcoholism.

Edith Pearlman

Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision – Saturday 11:00 AM

Edith Pearlman has published more than 250 works of short fiction and short non-fiction in national magazines, literary journals, anthologies, and on-line publications. Her first collection of stories, Vaquita, won the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature and was published by the University of Pittsburgh University Press in 1996. Her second, Love Among The Greats(Eastern Washington University Press, 2002) won the Spokane Annual Fiction Prize. Her third collection, How to Fall, was published by Sarabande Press in 2005 and won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.  Her fourth collection, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories, was published in January 2011 by Lookout Books, a new imprint at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is a New Englander by birth and preference. She grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and now lives with her husband in Brookline, Massachusetts. She has two grown children and a grandson. Edith Pearlman has worked in a computer firm and a soup kitchen and has served in Brookline's Town Meeting. Her hobbies are reading, walking, and matchmaking.

Tom Perrotta

The Leftovers – Saturday 2:30 PM

Tom Perrotta is the author of six works of fiction, including The Wishbones, Election and  Joe College.  His novels Election and Little Children were made into acclaimed and award-winning movies.  He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
Photo Credit: Mark Ostow.

Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott's Naked Summer – Saturday 9:00 AM

Andrew Scott is the author of Naked Summer, a short-story collection. He holds writing degrees from Purdue University and New Mexico State University, where he was twice awarded a Frank Waters Fiction Fellowship. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Ninth Letter, The Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The Writer’s Chronicle, and other publications. He co-edits Freight Stories, an online fiction journal, and teaches a variety of writing courses at Ball State University in Indiana.