2013 Nonfiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Benjamin Anastas

Too Good to Be True: A Memoir — Saturday 11:00 AM

The Best American Essays — Saturday 1:00 PM

Benjamin Anastas is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary, recently re-released in paperback by the Dial Press, and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG), which was a New York Times notable book. His memoir Too Good to Be True was published in October of 2012 by New Harvest/HMH. Other work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, and The Best American Essays 2012.

He is currently a visiting faculty member at Bennington College and also teaches at Bennington's low-residency MFA program.

Jay Atkinson

Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man — Saturday 1:00 PM

Methuen native Jay Atkinson is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, investigative journalist, and itinerant amateur athlete. He is the author of two novels, a story collection, and four narrative nonfiction books. His 2001 book, ICE TIME, was a Publisher’s Weekly notable book of the year, and LEGENDS OF WINTER HILL was on the Boston Globe bestseller list for seven weeks in 2005. Jay has published a historical novel set in Lawrence, Mass., CITY IN AMBER, and a collection of stories grounded in the Merrimack Valley, entitled TAUVERNIER STREET. Jay's latest book, published by St. Martin's Press, is MEMOIRS OF A RUGBY-PLAYING MAN. Reviewing for the Wall Street Journal, novelist Allan Massie called the book "Exhilarating." A former two sport college athlete, Atkinson has competed in rugby for three decades and continues to play in exotic locales with the Vandals Rugby Club of Los Angeles. He teaches writing at Boston University.

Mira Bartók

The Power of Family, The Power of Words — Saturday 9:00 AM

New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, Mira Bartók is an artist, NPR commentator and author of twenty-eight books for children. Her bestselling book, The Memory Palace, is a breathtaking literary memoir about the complex meaning of love, truth and forgiveness among family.  Her writing has appeared in literary journals, magazines and anthologies and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and noted in The Best American Essays series. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she mentors other writers and runs Mira's List, a blog that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world. Along with her drummer and music producer Doug Plavin, she is also co-founder of North of Radio, a multi-media collaborative. You can find her at: http://www.mirabartok.com.

Christopher Bonanos

Instant: The Story of Polaroid — Saturday 10:00 AM

Christopher Bonanos is a senior editor at New York magazine, and the author of INSTANT: THE STORY OF POLAROID (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). He's written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Slate.com, and runs his own site at www.polaroidland.net. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and their son, who appears in hundreds of instant photographs.

Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

The Power of Family, The Power of Words — Saturday 9:00 AM

Carolyn Roy-Bornstein is a practicing pediatrician and an award-winning writer whose essays and short fiction have appeared in the Boston Globe, JAMA, Yale Journal of Medical Humanities, The Writer, Brain,Child, Literary Mama, several Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies as well as many other venues. She writes a syndicated health column called Pediatric Points. She has taught writing workshops at the University of Iowa’s Examined Life Conference as well as Grub Street, Inc. in Boston. Her memoir Crash: A Mother, a Son, and the Journey from Grief to Gratitude was published by Globe Pequot Press in 2012.

Joel Brown

On the Trail of Newburyport — Saturday 11:00 AM

Joel Brown has written for many different sections of the Boston Globe since 2005, including numerous features about Essex County for Globe North that prepared him to write the Essex Coastal Byway Guide. Previously he worked as a reporter and/or editor for the Boston Herald, Electronic Media, the Daily Southtown and the Greenfield Recorder. He is a Massachusetts native, a lifelong Red Sox fan and a resident of Newburyport since 1998. He has also written two mysteries set in a place called "Libertyport."

Barry Estabrook

The Best Food Writing — Saturday 2:30 PM

Barry Estabrook is the author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. A James-Beard-Award-winning journalist, Estabrook was a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine until its closure in 2009. In addition to editing and writing regular features on food politics, he helped compile three anthologies of articles from the magazine for Random House/Modern Library and originated and developed the editorial plan for The Gourmet Cookbook. He was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine, co-founder of Chapters Publishing and was publisher at Houghton Mifflin Company, where he managed that company’s cookbook and field guide lines. His work has also appeared in the New York Times “Dining” section and the New York Times Magazine, Men’s Health, Saveur, Gastronomica, TheAtlantic.com and many other national magazines, and he is the author of two crime novels published by St. Martin’s Press. He has been anthologized in The Best American Food Writing 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He was co-writer of Jacques Pépin’s best-selling memoir The Apprentice. His blog is www.politicsoftheplate.com. He lives on a 30-acre plot in Vermont, where he tends a large garden and keeps a small flock of laying hens.

Ethan Gilsdorf

What's Wrong with the Real World? A Fantastic Conversation About Fantasy
– Saturday 2:30 PM

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories, essays and reviews regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, and wired.com. He is a core contributor to the blog "GeekDad" at wired.com, his blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and he is a regular contributor to Boston NPR affiliate WBUR's Cognescenti blog. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe, and is the film columnist for Art New England. To research various writing projects, Gilsdorf has interviewed Sir Ben Kingsley, Steve Carell, Viggo Mortensen, Andy Serkis, Seth Rogen, and Sister Helen Prejean, among other cultural figures. He has taste-tested caffeinated beer; acted as an Hollywood extra; and embarked on a quest for the perfect French fry. He has walked across Scotland, mountain biked the French Pyrenees, explored caves in New York State and backpacked through India. He has worn a tunic for two weeks while camping with 12,000 medieval reenactors and learned to sword fight (badly). He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and teaches creative writing workshops at Grub Street, where he also serves on the Board of Directors.

Steve Holt

The Best Food Writing — Saturday 2:30 PM

Steve is passionate about telling people's stories and improving the world through the written word. His nonfiction reporting and essays regularly appear in Edible Boston, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe, and he reports on sustainable food several times a week for TakePart.com. In 2010, Steve's Edible Boston feature about healthy fast food was anthologized in Best Food Writing 2011. He lives with his wife, son and poodle in East Boston, where he writes, gardens, runs, and works to improve his community.

Holly Hughes

The Best Food Writing — Saturday 2:30 PM

Holly Hughes has lived in New York City since 1978, although there isn’t a day she doesn’t dream about moving. She is the founder and editor of 13 editions (and counting) of the annual Best Food Writing anthology. Her past also includes stints as the executive editor of Fodor’s Travel Publications, writer of 12 travel guides for Frommer’s (including 500 Places to See Before They Disappear), and the author of 13 novels for adolescent girls. She and her husband Bob Ward have raised 3 children in NYC and the last of them is heading for college next fall. (Did anyone say “road trip”?)

Stuart Isacoff

Western Civilization — Saturday 1:00 PM

Stuart Isacoff is active across North America and Europe as a writer, pianist, composer and lecturer. His presence in the cultural landscape has included ongoing presentations at such venues as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center, as well as at music festivals around the world. He is a regular contributor on music and art to The Wall Street Journal, and a faculty member of the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY). Mr. Isacoff is the author of A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians—From Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between (Knopf), and of the highly acclaimed Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization (Knopf/Vintage). He is a winner of the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. Stuart Isacoff’s lectures and piano performances have been featured at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Verbier Festival and Academy (Switzerland), Music@Menlo, the Portland Piano Festival, the Miami Piano Festival, the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the September Music Festival (Torino), the Gina Bachauer Foundation (Salt Lake City), the Van Cliburn Piano Institute and others, as well as at such scientific institutions as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Bradbury Science Museum and the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics. Photo by Michael Lionstar.

Carol Kelley

Accidental Immigrants and the Search for Home — Saturday 10:00 AM

Carol Kelley is a cultural anthropologist and former lawyer, and has primarily worked as a social policy researcher for universities and non-profit organizations. She is the author of Accidental Immigrants and the Search for Home: Women, Cultural Identity and Community (Temple University Press, 2013). Her interest in the emotional journeys of immigrants emerged from her work as an ethnographer, her own personal experiences, and from observing the life of her sister, an immigrant to Norway. She currently makes her home in Newburyport, MA.

Ron Koltnow

CLOSING CEREMONY: Sue Little and Friends: The Future of the Book
— Saturday 7:00 PM

Ron Koltnow has been involved in selling books for forty years, first as a bookseller and later as a publisher’s sales rep. His articles and reviews have appeared in Washington D.C,’s City Paper, Magill’s Survey of Cinema, Magill’s Cinema Annual, and The ARSC JOURNAL. He has been awarded the Bud Fairbanks Award for Marketing, the Outstanding Achievement Award for Book Selling, and shared the Saul Gilman Award from the New England Booksellers Association. He was Publisher’s Weekly’s Sales Rep of the Year in 2010. Mr. Koltnow lives in Boston with his wife and beloved cat.

Toby Lester

Da Vinci’s Ghost — Saturday 9:00 AM

Toby Lester, the author of Da Vinci's Ghost (2012) and The Fourth Part of the World (2009), is a journalist, an editor, and an independent scholar. In addition to writing books, he is a longtime contributor to The Atlantic, for whom he has written extensively, on such topics as the reconstruction of ancient Greek music, the revisionist study of the Qur'an, and the attempt to change alphabets in Azerbaijan. Between 1995 and 2005 he worked for The Atlantic in a number of different editorial capacities—as a staff editor, as the executive editor of the website, as a senior editor, and as a managing editor. He has also served as the editor of Country Journal and the executive editor of DoubleTake, and is currently the editorial director at Boston Magazine. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, The American Scholar, The Wilson Quarterly, BBC News Magazine, and the London Times, as well as a number of anthologies, including the lead chapter of the New Literary History of America (2009).

Sue Little

CLOSING CEREMONY: Sue Little and Friends: The Future of the Book
— Saturday 7:00 PM

Sue Little opened Jabberwocky “the Little Bookshop” in 1972, at age 22, with just $2,000 in a not-yet renovated Newburyport. 40 years later, Jabberwocky Bookshop is one of the larger independent bookstores of New England, bringing together a community of readers from a wide geographical area. Bringing books and people together has been for Sue both a passion and a joy. Sue is the 9th generation on The Little Farm in Newbury — one of the oldest farms in the U.S. still owned by the original family. She has 2 children, both of whom grew up in the bookstore. Her daughter Morgan is a National Sales Account Manager for John Wiley Publisher, and her son, Erik, a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of a number of published short stories. And she is the proud grandmother of Hadden, 6 months old, who already loves books.

Erin Byers Murray

The Best Food Writing — Saturday 2:30 PM

Erin Byers Murray is a food and wine writer and author of the memoir Shucked: Life On A New England Oyster Farm. She currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee where she is the managing editor of Nashville Lifestyles magazine. Her work has been published in Food & Wine, the Boston Globe, Boston magazine, Edible Boston, and many more. She blogs about oysters, food, and travel at http://shucked.wordpress.com.

Lauren Slater

The $60,000 Dog – My Life With Animals — Saturday 10:00 AM C A N C E L L E D

Lauren Slater is the author of six books, including Welcome to My Country, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Opening Skinner's Box, the short-story collection Blue Beyond Blue, and Love Works Like This, which chronicled the agonizing decisions she made relating to her psychiatric illness and her pregnancy. Slater has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2004 National Endowments for the Arts Award, multiple inclusions in Best American volumes, and a Knight Science Journalism fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Slater was a practicing psychologist for eleven years before embarking on a full-time writing career. She served as the clinical and later executive director of AfterCare Services. Slater lives and writes in Harvard, Massachusetts.
Photo Credit: Dianne Newton

Ghlee E. Woodworth

On the Trail of Newburyport — Saturday 11:00 AM

Ghlee E. Woodworth, a local historian, is the creator and author of Newburyport’s Clipper Heritage Trail, a series of self-guided history tours of Newburyport in the 1700s and 1800s accessed via a website – www.clipperheritagetrail.com. The website offers 125 different locations of historical points of interest with over 200 images on 12 tours. In May a mobile version will be launched. Ghlee’s first publication Tiptoe Through the Tombstones, Oak Hill Cemetery, won awards from the New England (2009) and New York (2010) Book Festivals and was one of the top 75 nationwide finalists of the American Association for State and Local History (2010). Having trained in gravestone restoration Ghlee has lead volunteers in repairing over 1,200 gravestones during the past three years in local cemeteries.

Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough

The Best American Essays — Saturday 1:00 PM

Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough was born in Poland and came to the United States in 1984 on an academic exchange program. She is an essayist and a literary translator. Her essays have appeared in Agni, The Missouri Review, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, The American Scholar, TriQuarterly, and other journals. One of them was selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2012; another was listed among Notable Essays of 2011. Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough teaches at Emerson College in Boston and divides her time between Boston and Krakow, Poland. She’s married to the novelist Steve Yarbrough.

David Yoo

The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever — Saturday 1:00 PM

David Yoo is most recently the author of the essay collection The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever (Grand Central). His other books include the YA novels Girls for Breakfast (Delacorte), which was named a NYPL Best Book for Teens and a Booksense Pick, Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before (Hyperion), a Chicago Best of the Best selection, of which author Jonathan Lethem wrote, “David Yoo's voice is so witty and charming it only seems fair to give warning: he’ll break the hearts of teenage readers of all ages with this bittersweet love story,” and the middle grade novel, The Detention Club (Balzer & Bray). He holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. David has a regular column in Koream Journal, and teaches in the MFA program at Pine Manor College and at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.
To read the exact same information again, please visit www.daveyoo.com.