It’s (Author) Party Time!

In her books, Amy Tan explores mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film. Ms. Tan's subsequent books included the Kitchen God’s Wife, two books for children, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. Occasionally, Tan serves as lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer, and second tambourine with the literary garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members include Stephen King, Dave Barry, Matt Groening, Greg Iles, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr, Ridley Pearson, Sam Barry and Scott Turow. In spite of their dubious talent, their yearly gigs have managed to raise nearly two million dollars for literacy programs.  A nonfiction memoir by the band, titled Hard Listening (Coliloquy) was published in 2014.

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize−winning author of more than two dozen books including You Can Date When You're 40. Along with Ridley Pearson, he is the co-author of the Peter and the Starcatchers series and Science Fair. In his latest novel, The Worst Class Trip Ever (Disney-Hyperion), Barry presents a fast-paced tale of a class trip to Washington, D.C. gone very wrong. Told in the voice of eighth-grader Wyatt Palmer, Wyatt, his best friend, Matt, and a few kids from Culver Middle School find themselves in a heap of trouble—not just with their teachers, who have long lost patience with them—but from several mysterious men they first meet on their flight to the nation's capital.  Can these kids stay out of danger and out of the doghouse as they try to save the president from a possible assassination attempt?

Greg Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of twelve New York Times bestsellers.  His novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide.  His new epic trilogy continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and New York Times #1 bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl. Iles is a member of the legendary lit-rock group “The Rock Bottom Remainders.”  Like bandmate Stephen King, Greg returned to the musical stage after recovering from his injuries, and joined the band for their final two shows in Los Angeles in 2012.  Hard Listening also contains a short story Greg wrote as an homage to King.

Mary Karr is the author of three award-winning, bestselling memoirs: The Liars' Club, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cherry, and Lit, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University In The Art of Memoir (Harper) Karr synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of memoir that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. In their Top 10 Notable Book Citation, New York Times Book Review calls it, “A master class on the art of the memoir.”

Mitch Albom is the author of six consecutive number-one New York Times bestsellers and has sold more than thirty-four million copies of his books in forty-two languages worldwide. Tuesdays with Morrie, which spent four years atop the New York Times list, is the bestselling memoir of all time. Albom has founded seven charities, including the first-ever full-time medical clinic for homeless children in America. He also operates an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His latest novel, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (Harper), tells the epic story of the greatest guitar player to ever live, and the six lives he changed with his magical blue strings.