#ARSL2024 Author Fest

Celebrate the vibrant talent of authors from Springfield and beyond at our afternoon Author Fest! Meet your next favorite authors, hear readings, and purchase copies of books to get signed.

ARSL Author Fest will run 7:00-9:00pm on Friday, September 13.

Author Fest Schedule

The following schedule is subject to change.

7:05–7:10 PM | Welcome Remarks

7:10–9:00 PM | Signings & Readings

7:15–7:35 PM | Pop-Up Readings I

7:45–8:05 PM | Pop-Up Readings II

8:15–8:35 PM | Pop-Up Readings III

8:35–9:00 pm | Signings Continued

Participating Authors

Laurie Lico Albanese is a historical novelist, journalist, and poet, most recently the acclaimed author of Hester (St. Martin’s Press, 2022), which gives voice to Hester Prynne in a retelling of The Scarlet Letter. Hester is a Book of the Month club selection, a Gillian Flynn Best Books of Fall, and an Audible and Goodreads Best Books of 2022. Albanese’s previous books include Stolen Beauty (Atria Books, 2017), The Miracles of Prato (William Morrow, 2009 / co-authored with Laura Morowitz), Lynelle by the Sea (Dutton, 2000), and Blue Suburbia (Harper Perennial, 2004), a memoir in verse. She is the recipient of a Brandeis grant, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and a Catherine R. Dodge Foundation grant. Laurie earned a degree in journalism at NYU and an MFA in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine/Stonecoast. She’s taught writing and literature at Wagner College, Montclair State University, and elsewhere, and leads ongoing community writing workshops.

Jeannine Atkins writes about strong, creative girls and women, particularly those with a passion for STEM. Her books of historical verse for readers ten-up include Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science, Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math, Hidden Powers: Lise Meitner and the Call to Science (all from Atheneum Books/Simon and Schuster) and Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C. J. Walker, Marie Curie and Their Daughters (Holt/Macmillan) Read more about these on her website: www.Jeannineatkins.com.

Jennifer Baker is an author/editor, writing instructor, and creator of the Minorities in Publishing podcast. She’s been a recipient of NYSCA/NYFA and Queens Council on the Arts grants, a 2024 Axinn Writing Award, and was named the Publishers Weekly Star Watch SuperStar in 2019. She edited the short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life (2018) and is the author of Forgive Me Not (2023) a 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, an NYPL 2023 Best Book for Teens, and 2023 Best of the Best by the BCALA. Her website is: jennifernbaker.com.

Douglas Bauer has written seven books. His most recent are The Beckoning World, a “Must Read” selection of the Massachusetts Library Associated and long-listed for The Massachusetts Book Award in fiction, and What Happens Next: Matters of Life and Death, which won the PEN/New England award in non-fiction. He’s been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in both fiction and creative non-fiction, and has taught at Harvard, where he was given two Harvard-Danforth Center awards for excellence in teaching, and at Rice University, Smith College, Wesleyan University and the Bennington College Writing Seminars. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jennifer C.Berkshire - I'm the author of The Education Wars: A Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual and the host of the education policy podcast, Have You Heard.

Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. Bouwsma is Maine’s sixth poet laureate, serving a term from 2021 to 2026, and author of three poetry collections: Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publications, forthcoming 2025), Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). She is the Director of Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.

Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of Disease of Kings (W.W. Norton, 2023), The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Washington Post, Harvard Review, Poetry, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, and many other publications. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is the winner of the Poetry International Prize. Anders is represented by Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents and lives in Los Angeles.

Matt Cost is the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of the Mainely Mystery series. The first book, Mainely Power, was selected as the Maine Humanities Council Read ME Fiction Book of 2020. His Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Mysteries include Wolfe Trap, Mind Trap, Mouse Trap, and Cosmic Trap, and now, Pirate Trap. I Am Cuba: Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was his first traditionally published novel. There are several other historical fiction novels on the shelf. Cost's love of histories and mysteries is combined in the novel, Velma Gone Awry, book one in his new series featuring private eye, 8 Ballo, set in 1920's Brooklyn. The second book, City Gone Askew, will publish in August of 2024. Cost lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Lee Desrosiers (they/them) is the author of three full-length books of poetry, most recently "Keeping Planes in the Air" (Salmon Poetry 2020). Desrosiers' poetry, which covers themes of family, immigration, music, nature and ephemera, has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. They are based in Westfield, Massachusetts. Desrosiers is also the publisher of two literary journals, Wordpeace.co and Naugatuck River Review.

Ursula DeYoung - I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and work primarily as a novelist and freelance editor. Occasionally I teach seminars and workshops at the GrubStreet Creative Writing Center in Boston. I grew up on Cape Ann and studied history and literature at Harvard and Oxford. My first published book was nonfiction: a biography of the 19th-century physicist John Tyndall, titled A VISION OF MODERN SCIENCE (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). My first novel, SHORECLIFF, was published by Little, Brown in 2013 and tells the story of a large family spending a summer in Maine in 1928. Seven years ago, hoping to give fellow writers a boost, I founded the online journal EMBARK (embarkliteraryjournal.com), which features the openings of unpublished novels, and I'm happy to say the journal is still running, with two issues released per year.

Wes Dyson was world building before he knew his alphabet. An only child, he created backstories, worlds and dramas for all his toys to live through. Miraculously, he retained that massive imagination into adulthood and channeled it into his first award-winning novel, Myracles in the Void. He lives in western MA with his four lovably crazy dogs, who constantly remind him not to take life too seriously.

Max Folsom, a former bookmobile librarian and later a library board president, is a member of Sisters in Crime, the League of Vermont Writers and the Crime Writers of Canada. She writes a column in the quarterly Sherlockian journal "Groans, Cries and Bleatings." She lives with her husband, a retired Canadian military officer, and a fat ginger car she describes as a "furry freeloader," and divides her time between their Vermont stone house and an apartment mere blocks from Parliament Hill, in Canada's capital city, Ottawa. She shares three things with her feisty protagonist: a Mini Cooper, red hair, and a coffee addiction. She is currently at work on the fourth Baker Somerset mystery.

Celia Jeffries is the author of the award-winning novel BLUE DESERT. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. Jeffries holds an MA from Brandeis and worked in news and educational publishing before earning an MFA from Lesley University. She has worked with writers at all levels, from elementary school to university both here and abroad, and in many different communities, including incarcerated, literacy, and ESL programs. Her own writing has been nurtured in the community of writers in Western Massachusetts, where she is a founding member and served on the steering committee of Straw Dog Writers Guild, and where she offers workshops at Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop.

After a lifetime of heavy duty writing for her firm, Val Kerin finally finished her first commercial book in March! Val is passionate about dusty, underappreciated corners of history and can animate nearly anyone at a dinner party with fascinating facts about something on their plate that they would rather not know.She is too well read and well traveled for her own good and enjoys popping bubble wrap and extreme office sports involving the paper shredder. Val’s new book; Eats: The Shocking Secret History of Food and Eating is available on Amazon.

Uzma Aslam Khan is the prize-winning author of five novels published worldwide. These include Trespassing, a 2003 Commonwealth Prize nominee; The Geometry of God, a Kirkus Reviews' Best Book of 2009; Thinner Than Skin, nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and winner of the French Embassy Prize for Best Fiction at the Karachi Literature Festival 2014. Her work has won or been nominated for Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction Prize, Australian Book Review’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, and Calyx’s Margarita Donnelly Prize. It has appeared in Granta, The Massachusetts Review, Australian Book Review, Nimrod, AGNI, Calyx, Guardian UK, and other journals. Khan’s most recent novel, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, was a New York Times' "Best Historical Fiction 2022" as well as a New York Times' "Books for Summer 2022." In 2023, it won the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction. Born in Pakistan, Khan has lived in the Philippines, Japan, England, Morocco, and Oceania. Since 2012, she has made a home in western Massachusetts.

Between five novels, two nonfiction books, and two decades in newspapers,Stephen P. Kiernan has had nearly five million words in print. His work has been translated into many languages, and optioned for TV and feature films. Winner of more than forty writing awards, he lives in rural Vermont.

Yume Kitasei is the author of THE DEEP SKY and THE STARDUST GRAIL from Flatiron Books. She is half Japanese and half American and grew up in a space between two cultures—the same space where her stories reside. She lives in Brooklyn with two cats, Boondoggle and Filibuster. Her stories have appeared in publications including New England Review, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. She chirps occasionally @Yumewrites at Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky.

Now in production for a series on FX, journalist Stephen Kurczy's "The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence" (Dey Street Books, 2021) was a Washington Post book of the month as well as one of one of USA Today’s “5 books not to miss.” In a riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are banned, Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet. Originally from Connecticut, Kurczy is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Christian Science Monitor, among other outlets. He graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he was a 2016-2017 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism. Now a visiting assistant professor at Providence College, Kurczy has lived without a cell phone for 15 years.

Henriette Lazaridis is the author of LAST DAYS IN PLAKA, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, TERRA NOVA, which the New York Times called "ingenious", and THE CLOVER HOUSE, a Boston Globe best-seller. Her short work has appeared in Elle, Forge, The New York Times, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. She runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece and is the co-founder of Galiot Press. www.henriettelazaridis.com

Margot Livesey grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands and has taught in numerous writing programs including Emerson College, Boston University, Bowdoin College and the Warren Wilson low residency MFA program. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Boy in the Field. The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing was published in 2017. She is a professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and goes back to Scotland whenever she can. Her tenth novel, The Road from Belhaven, was published in February, 2024.

Lisa Q. Mathews began her publishing career as an editor of Nancy Drew books. She also wrote for other popular kids’ series, including Mary-Kate and Ashley, Sweet Dreams, and the Lizzie McGuire Mysteries. After many years working and raising her family in New York, Lisa returned home to New England, where she now writes lighthearted adult mysteries featuring family themes and strong female characters. Her series include the Ladies Smythe & Westin (Carina Press) and the new, Massachusetts-set Irish Bed & Breakfast Mysteries. Book #1, THE JIG IS UP, will be published on August 20, 2024 (Crooked Lane Books). Lisa’s short story “Fly Me to the Morgue” in Mystery Most Diabolical was a recent Agatha Award finalist. A member of the mighty Quinn clan, Lisa lives in New Hampshire with her family, including a crazy golden retriever and a wily black cat from her old Brooklyn neighborhood.

Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest, and the play Gridlock. She is guest editor for the anthology Dreams for a Broken World. Essay and story publications include Ms. Magazine, Lilith, The Writer Magazine, Solstice Magazine, Guernica, Lit Hub, and Mom Egg Review. Her work focuses on the lives of women, especially those on the fault lines between political activism and family, and has been a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads. Ellen lives in western Massachusetts, where she is a founding mother of Straw Dog Writers Guild.

Randy Susan Meyers, a critically acclaimed international bestselling author of five novels, has been recognized by the Massachusetts Council of the Book. They have chosen three of her books as Must-Read Books, praising her clear and distinctive voice that captivates readers and leaves them yearning for more. Though her novels explore domestic drama, societal issues, and cultural nuances, informed by her years working with community and governmental agencies, she gained the most insight into family and other politics during her four years as a bartender in a small Boston neighborhood bar. Meyers is a Brooklyn-Boston hybrid who believes happiness requires family, friends, books, and an occasional NY bagel. She lives in Boston with her husband and teaches at the Grub Street Writer's Center.

Richard Michelson’s many books for children, teens, and adults have been listed among the Ten Best of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker; and among the Best Dozen of the Decade by Amazon.com. Michelson has received a National Jewish Book Award, and two Sydney Taylor Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Other credits include three Massachusetts Book Award Honors, three Skipping Stones Multicultural Book Awards, three Junior Library Guild Gold Medals, and an International Reading Association Teacher’s Choice Award. Michelson’s work was chosen to represent the Commonwealth at the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival and he received the 2019 Samuel Minot Jones Lifetime Achievement Award. Michelson served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton MA where he owns R. Michelson Galleries. www.RichardMichelson.com

Louise Miller is the author of THE CITY BAKER'S GUIDE TO COUNTRY LIVING and THE LATE BLOOMERS' CLUB. She is a professional pastry chef, an art school dropout, an amateur naturalist, an old-time banjo player, an obsessive moviegoer, a meditation enthusiast and a gardener of flowers. Louise writes and bakes in Boston, MA, where she lives with her partner and an assortment of cats.

Naila Moreira is the author of the children’s eco-novel THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN (Walker Books US, 2024) and the award-winning nature poetry collection WATER STREET (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her bird-and-nature watching and her work as a geologist have taken her to the coasts, forests and grasslands of New England, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Brazil. Through it all, she’s kept her pen busy writing about her adventures. A former artist-in-residence at the Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine, Naila Moreira now teaches at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she lives with her family.

Korina Moss is the author of the Agatha Award-winning Cheese Shop Mystery series (St. Martin’s Press) set in the Sonoma Valley. Her books have been featured in PARADE Magazine, Woman’s World, AARP, and Fresh Fiction. To learn more, visit her website korinamossauthor.com.

Julia McKenzie Munemo’s first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy (2020), explores how, decades after her father’s suicide, she—a white woman married to a Black man and raising mixed-race children—learned that her dad made his living writing interracial pornography under pseudonym. She hopes to soon announce the publication of her second book, Dreaming in Whitopia: Essays on Race, Mental Health, and Motherhood from a White American Town. Her work has appeared in Public Seminar, Solstice Literary Magazine, Inside Higher Education, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She earned a BA from Bard and an EdM from Harvard before returning to school—many years later—for an MFA in creative nonfiction. She directs the Williams College Writing Center and lives in Williamstown, Ma.

Cleyvis Natera is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and professor. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was awarded a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, TIME, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal. Natera has been supported through awards, fellowships and artist residencies by the Vermont Studio Center, PEN America, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. She teaches fiction at Barnard College of Columbia University and Montclair State University. Natera’s second novel, The Grand Paloma Resort, is forthcoming in 2025.

Catherine Newman has written numerous columns, articles, and canned-bean recipes for magazines and newspapers, and her essays have been widely anthologized. She is the author of the novels Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things; the memoirs Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness; the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night; and the bestselling kids’ life-skills books How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? She also writes the newsletter Crone Sandwich on Substack. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime. He's traveled to all 50 states, Mexico, Canada, and through Europe.

Virginia Pye is the author of four books of fiction, essays, and short stories. Her latest historical novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, was published in October 2023. Her collection, Shelf Life of Happiness won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, River of Dust was an Indie Next Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix was named a Best Book of 2015. Virginia’s essays have appeared in Literary Hub, The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and numerous literary magazines. She has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, at Grub Street Writing Center’s Muse and Marketplace Conference in Boston. Please visit her at: [email protected]

Ted Rau is an advocate, trainer and consultant for self-governance. His main focus is sociocracy. After his PhD in linguistics and work in Academia, he co-founded the membership organization Sociocracy For All in 2016 which has grown to 250 members with several international and topic-focused departments and action teams. Ted spends his days consulting with mission-driven organizations, teaching and deeply immersed in the work as a member within Sociocracy For All. Ted identifies as a transgender man; he has 5 children between 10 and 20. A German citizen, he has lived in Massachusetts since 2010. He is (co)-author of three books on self-governance, Many Voices One Song (2018), Who Decides Who Decides (2021), and Collective Power (2023) and working on a book on the interface between governance and wisdom.

Sara Rauch is the author WHAT SHINES FROM IT and XO. She has written for the LA Review of Books, Bustle, Curve, WBUR, The Rumpus, and more. A Massachusetts native, she lives in Holyoke with her family.

Alyson Richman is the USA Today bestselling and #1 international bestselling author of several historical novels including The Thread Collectors, The Velvet Hours, and The Lost Wife, which is currently in development for a major motion picture. Alyson graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history and Japanese studies. She herself is an accomplished painter and her novels combine her deep love of art, historical research, and travel. Alyson's novels have been published in more twenty-five languages and have reached the bestseller lists both in the United States and abroad. Her new novel, The Time Keepers, will be published in October 2024.

Jennifer Rosner is the author of the novels Once We Were Home and The Yellow Bird Sings, both finalists for the National Jewish Book Award among other honors. Other books include the memoir If a Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and be Heard, and the picture book, The Mitten String, A Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifer's work has been translated into a dozen languages. Her short writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Times of Israel, The Forward, and elsewhere. In addition to writing, Jennifer has taught philosophy. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Columbia. She lives in western MA with her family.

Elizabeth Santiago is a fiction writer and teacher. Her debut novel, The Moonlit Vine, tells the little known narrative of the Taíno people, the native people of Puerto Rico. She obtained her PhD from Lesley University, Master of Education from Harvard University, and BFA from Emerson College.

Maria Scrivan is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning syndicated cartoonist, and speaker based in Connecticut. Her laugh-out-loud syndicated comic, Half Full, appeared daily in newspapers nationwide for a decade, and is available on gocomics.com. Maria licenses her work for greeting cards, and her cartoons have appeared in MAD Magazine, Parade, and many other publications. Nat Enough, her debut graphic novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and launched her critically acclaimed six-book series of the same name. Learn more about Maria at mariascrivan.com.

Candelaria Norma Silva is an author, coach, and facilitator. She connects community-based groups to the arts and arts and cultural institutions to the BIPOC community. Her children’s stories, fiction, essays and reviews have been published in local and national publications. She has published three children’s books since 2020 featuring an active girl named Stacey Huggins. An active member of Boston’s cultural community, she is currently Chair of the Designators of the George B. Henderson Foundation; board member of Legacy Fund Boston; and Program Manager for the Fellowes Athenaeum Trust Fund (for programs at the Roxbury Branch of Boston Public Library). Until summer of 2023 she was Coordinator of the Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston.

Karen Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and Amherst poet. Her book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize; her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she earned her MFA, and she served as poet laureate for Northampton, MA for 2019-2022.

Dennis James Sweeney is the author, most recently, of The Rolodex Happenings (Stillhouse Press, 2024), a novella in performance art Happenings. He is also the author of You’re the Woods Too (Essay Press, 2023) and In the Antarctic Circle (Autumn House Press, 2021), as well as four chapbooks of poetry and prose, including Ghost/Home: A Beginner’s Guide to Being Haunted (Ricochet Editions, 2020). His writing has appeared in Ecotone, The New York Times, and The Southern Review, among others. He has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Timothy Symington - I have lived and worked in Western Massachusetts for just about my entire life. I grew up in the Holyoke/South Hadley area. I currently reside in Wilbraham. Before becoming a writer, I was an educator (middle school and college) and part-time librarian. My area of expertise is early American history, and I write for the Journal of the American Revolution. Besides writing and reading about history, I enjoy anything that has to do with the Beatles and dolphins. My first book, “Huzza!” Toasting a New Nation, 1760-1815, came about because of my master’s thesis. A second nonfiction history book is already being considered.

Heather Webb is the USA Today and international bestselling author of ten historical novels, including her most recent, Queens of London, The Next Ship Home, and Strangers in the Night. Up and coming in October 2024, she joins forces with her sometimes-co-author, NYT bestselling author Hazel Gaynor, for their fourth collaboration, Christmas with the Queen. In 2015, Rodin’s Lover was a Goodreads' Top Pick, and in 2018, Last Christmas in Paris won the Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. Meet Me in Monaco, was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Goldsboro RNA award in the UK, as well as the 2019 Digital Book World’s Fiction prize. Three Words for Goodbye was a Prima Magazine’s 2022 Book of the Year. To date, Heather’s books have been translated to eighteen languages. She lives in Connecticut with her family and two mischievous kitties.

A native of Nyack, New York, Soon Wiley received his BA in English & Philosophy from Connecticut College. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. His critically acclaimed debut novel, WHEN WE FELL APART, was published in 2022. He resides with his family in Connecticut, where he is at work on his second novel.

Kip Wilson is the critically acclaimed YA author of historical verse novels White Rose (Versify, 2019), The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin (Versify, 2022), and One Last Shot (Versify, 2023). Awards for her books include the Malka Penn Award and the Julia Ward Howe Award, and her books have been named a Massachusetts Book Honor title, an Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award finalist, and a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. Her next project, All the Love Under the Vast Sky, is a YA anthology of stories in verse (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2025). Kip holds a Ph.D. in German Literature and is an enthusiastic high school library worker at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. Find her online at kipwilsonwrites.com and on Instagram @kipwilsonwrites.

Jean Woodbury began her career teaching children on an army base in Hawaii and, later, on a pineapple plantation. She eventually moved to New England, where she earned a PhD in Higher Education and served as a college dean. Jean is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Her biographical profile, "Marion P. Shadd, Freeborn Child of the American Civil War," won a short story competition sponsored by Lee and Low Books, and her picture book, THE TREE IN DOCK SQUARE, won the Grand Prize in a region-wide contest sponsored by Cape Ann’s public libraries. The award was a first-edition, hardcover publication worth $10,000. Jean’s focus is on picture books for older readers. In 2023 her book review for Patricia Polacco’s TUCKY JO AND LITTLE HEART, “The Power of Longer Picture Books,” was published in the Massachusetts Reading Association Primer Journal.

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