Authors

MARGOT LIVESEY was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co.), The Flight of Gemma Hardy: A Novel (Harper), Mercury: A Novel (Harper), and The Boy in the Field: A Novel (Harper). She has received awards from the National Education Association, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

JENNY LIZÁRRAGA ​​Ingeniera con maestrías en comunicación y finanzas corporativas de FIU y recientemente se especializó en marketing digital e inteligencia artificial aplicada a los negocios con Northwestern University. Jenny es promotora cultural y se destaca como conferencista en ferias internacionales del libro y conferencias. Ha dictado seminarios para organizaciones como SCBWI, NABE, La Cosecha, ALA y otros en Estados Unidos, España, Argentina y México. Es la fundadora de Cinco Books y directora editorial de Green Seeds Publishing. Desde el 2022 es la directora del comité que organiza la celebración del premio Pura Belpré en Estados Unidos. Actualmente vive en Miami. Participa este año en el XI Seminario de Literatura Infantil y Lectura.

CLAIRE LOMBARDO is the author of Same As It Ever Was: A Novel (Doubleday), a national bestseller that has received rave reviews from The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, The Guardian, and NPR, among others. Her debut novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had, was a New York Times bestseller. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages and optioned for television by Reese Witherspoon. She lives in Iowa City, where she has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Grinnell College, and works part-time as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books.

ERNESTO LONDOÑO is a national correspondent at The New York Times, where he has worked since 2014. He was born and raised in Colombia and has spent two decades covering some of the most important stories of his generation, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab Spring. He served on NYT's editorial board and was the newspaper's bureau chief in Brazil.

SILVIA LÓPEZ was born in Cuba and emigrated to Miami as a child. Her lifelong love of books led to a career as a school librarian and, later, a children’s author. López’s books, many of which are bilingual, have received multiple awards and starred reviews. She has a great interest in Hispanic culture but loves to write about anything and everything that catches her attention. López enjoys collaborating with Susan Rose on sweet and uplifting stories about bilingual José and his equally bilingual dog, Feliz.

OSCAR LÓPEZ is chair of the fashion department  at Miami Fashion Institute. Previously at Miami International University of Art & Design, he led the charge in aligning fashion curricula for eight campuses, developing the Fashion Merchandising Global program, which emphasized sustainability and technology, the focus of pioneering courses including Sustainable Textiles and 3D Fashion Design. López fostered valuable industry relationships on both local and national fronts, collaborating with organizations such as Miami Fashion Week, FashInnovation, Paraiso Swim Week, New York Fashion Week, and Fashion Group International. His dedication to education and talent development has earned him recognition, including as a former regional director and current district director for Fashion Group International (FGI), where he oversees South Florida, Chicago, and St. Louis. His leadership led FGI South Florida to be awarded the National Programming Merit Award in 2019. Prior to his career in academia, López was the national talent acquisition and planning manager for Saks Fifth Avenue's corporate office. He completed his second master's degree, in fashion management, at Parsons School of Design.

DANILO LÓPEZ ROMÁN La poesía, ficción, ensayos y arte digital de Danilo López-Román han sido publicados en Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linden Lane magazine, Carrier Pigeon, The Chachalaca Review, Border Senses, Phoebe Magazine, Baquiana, La Piccioletta Barca y muchos otros. Vive en Miami, Florida, donde trabaja como escritor, editor, antólogo, traductor, artista digital y arquitecto. Obras de sus siete colecciones de poesía y un libro de cuentos han sido antologadas en Estados Unidos, América Latina y España. Tiene una maestría en Escritura Creativa de la Universidad de Texas-El Paso. Su libro de poesía Generaciones, recibió Mención Honorífica en Florida Book Awards (2024) y su libro País al Borde de la Nada fue Finalista para Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur (2024). Este año participa en la presentación del libro Agua sagrada de Rubí Arana en su arrera bilingüe, con el cual se dará un homenaje póstumo a la vida y obra de la poeta nicaragüense, con la participación de escritores cercanos a la artista, que compartirán sus poemas y anécdotas más preciadas.

CARLOS LOZADA is an opinion columnist at The New York Times and co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and is the author of What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era. The essay collection The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians (Simon & Schuster) is his latest work.

Fashion journalist and historian NANCY MACDONELL is the author of five previous books, including The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites. She writes The Wall Street Journal column "Fashion with a Past," in which she explores the historic roots of current fashion trends. Her writing also has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Vogue, and other publications. Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion (St. Martin's Press) is her latest book.

RON MAGILL has worked with wildlife for more than 40 years. Formerly the host of HITN’s national wildlife documentary program Mundo Salvaje con Ron Magill, as Zoo Miami’s goodwill ambassador he's made frequent television appearances including on National Geographic Explorer, the Discovery Networks, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Dateline, and CNN. In addition, he is a Nikon USA ambassador and has written and produced many wildlife articles and award-winning photographs that have appeared in publications and galleries around the world. Magill has traveled extensively throughout Africa, Asia, and tropical America while developing and directing conservation projects and Emmy Award-winning documentaries focusing on the wildlife of those regions.

GREGORY MAGUIRE is the New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked – the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name and the major motion picture – Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. His Another Day series continues the story of Oz with The Brides of Maracoor, The Oracle of Maracoor, and The Witch of Maracoor, and his other novels include A Wild Winter Swan, Hiddensee, After Alice, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and Mirror Mirror. Some of his novels for children include Cress Watercress, Leaping Beauty, and Egg & Spoon, winner of a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. He lives in New England and France.

GEOFFREY MAK is a queer Chinese American writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Artforum, The Nation, Art in America, Interview, Spike, Guernica, Highsnobiety, and other publications. He holds an M.A. in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and is co-founder of the reading and performance series Writing on Raving.

Attorney SHAREEF MALNIK, co-founder/CEO of Sonrisa Rum, recently launched the brand as America’s newest Puerto Rican rum sensation, with a dollar from the sale of every bottle supporting Puerto Rican American microbusiness owners. Malnik is chairman emeritus of Make-A-Wish South Florida and has been chair of the Make-A-Wish Miami gala for 20 years. He also sits on the board of Rethink Baby, a nonprofit dedicated to infant rearing.

Dr. MICHAEL E. MANN is the Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is also the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). Mann is the author of six books, including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change and The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis (PublicAffairs) is his latest work.

JHANAYRA MANZANO Socióloga de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, Máster en Administración de empresas de la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello y Máster en Escritura Creativa de la Universidad de Salamanca. Sus poemas aparecen en la compilación Voces nuevas (Celarg, Caracas 2005) y en las revistas literarias El cautivo y Nagari. Uno de sus cuentos fue publicado en la antología Féminas (Ars Communis, Chicago 2021). Recibió Mención Honorífica en la Bienal Latinoamericana de Literatura «José Rafael Pocaterra» 2002-2004, por su poemario Infancia, amor mío. Participó por vía de concurso público en el «Taller de Poesía del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos» (2001-2002). Presenta en la Feria La sombra del arrer (Eclepsidra), una obra que habla de la infancia, pero no de la idealizada como un lugar de arrera e arrera, sino de una etapa vulnerada, marcada por la violencia, las ausencias y las omisiones, en la que se produce una herida cuyos ecos continúan resonando toda la vida.

SALLY WEN MAO is the author of three poetry collections: Oculus, which was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize and one of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019; Mad Honey Symposium, named a Top Ten Debut of 2014 in Poets & Writers; and The Kingdom of Surfaces, a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Wen Mao been published in The Paris Review, Harper Bazaar, Guenrica, and PEN America, among others, with rave reviews of her writing in national outlets such as The New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post. She lives in New York City.

MESHA MAREN is the author of Sugar Run: A Novel (Algonquin Books) and Perpetual West: A Novel (Algonquin Books). Her short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Crazyhorse, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Sou’wester, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial (Harper Perennial), and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, a 2014 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Appalachian Writing Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University, and fellowships from the MacDowell colony and the Ucross Foundation. She was also the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Maren is an associate professor of the practice of English at Duke University.

GREG MARSHALL is a personal trainer whose experience includes large chain gyms and private programs. He publishes the daily fitness blog www.fiture.co and his writing also appears in Club Industry, a fitness professionals magazine. He is currently the director of personal training at the gym at City Creek in Salt Lake City. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in prose, Marshall is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays and has been supported by MacDowell and the Corporation of Yaddo. His memoir Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It (Abrams Press) is his first book.

A native of New Jersey, CELESTINE MARTIN writes whimsical and flirty paranormal romances that celebrate the beauty of everyday magic. Her book Witchful Thinking (Forever) debuted in 2022, followed by Kiss and Spell (Forever) in 2023. Deja Brew (Forever), her third book in the Elemental Love series, was released in 2024. A former teenage witch and crone in training, Martin lives in New York City with her family. Check in on her at celestinemartin.com.

RODOLFO MARTÍNEZ SOTOMAYOR (La Habana, 1966). Ha publicado los libros Contrastes (1996), Claustrofobia y otros encierros (2005), Tres dramaturgos, tres generaciones (2012) y la novela Retrato de Nubia (2017), las compilaciones Palabras por un joven suicida (2006) y Crear en femenino (2017). Cuentos y poemas suyos han sido incluidos en antologías de los EE.UU. y Europa. Traducido al inglés, francés, alemán, finés y húngaro. Ha publicado críticas de cine, literatura, teatro y artículos de opinión en revistas y periódicos como: Diario Las Américas, Encuentro, El Nuevo Herald, El Universal. Fundador y Presidente de la Editorial Silueta; Director de la revista Conexos. Participa este año en la Feria conversando con los autores Wilema Wong, Xalbador García, y Alfredo Triff.

KELLY MARTÍNEZ GRANDAL nació en La Habana, en 1980 y, a la edad de trece años, emigró a Venezuela. Es Licenciada en Historia del Arte y Magíster en Literatura Comparada por la Universidad Central de Venezuela, institución donde también fue profesora. Además, trabajó como editora, curadora y crítico de fotografía para distintos museos e instituciones culturales. En 2014 emigró de nuevo, esta vez a Miami, Florida, donde trabaja como Editora de Producción para Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Ha publicado los poemarios Medulla Oblongata (2017), Zugunruhe (2020, traducido por Margaret Randall y ganador de la Medalla de Plata al arre libro bilingüe, Premio Juan Felipe Herrera, International Latino Books Award) y Una luna anacoreta (2021), así como el libro de cuentos Muerte con campanas (2021). Textos de su autoría están incluidos en las antologías 100 mujeres contra la violencia de género (2014), Equívocos. Poetas arrera del siglo XXI (2021) e Iluminado artificio. Ensayos sobre la obra de Mercedes Roffé (2022), entre otras publicaciones. En 2024, ganó la Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing, prestigiosa beca otorgada exclusivamente a creadores de origen arrer. Este año participa en la presentación del libro Agua sagrada de Rubí Arana en su arrera bilingüe, con el cual se dará un homenaje póstumo a la vida y obra de la poeta nicaragüense, con la participación de escritores cercanos a la artista, que compartirán sus poemas y anécdotas más preciadas.

NATALIA MARTINEZ-KALININA is an organizational psychologist and technologist focused on merging innovation, entrepreneurship, and impact. Her passion hinges on creating communities that are truly inclusive ecosystems. She is a co-founder and the COO of Base, a modern-day membership club that brings great minds together for curated, deep, intimate social experiences meant to hack serendipity. She is also the founder and principal of NMK Group, where she advises clients on economic development, human capital design, and impact strategy. Prior to that she led the expansion of the Cambridge Innovation Center to Miami and Latin America.

PRIYANKA MATTOO is a writer, filmmaker, former talent agent, and co-founder of Earios, a women-led podcast network. She is a contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Mattoo holds degrees in Italian and law from the University of Michigan. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

FARID MATUK is the author of several books, including the book-arts project Redolent, the forthcoming poetry collection Moon Mirrored Indivisible (University of Chicago Press, 2025), and the chapbooks Is It the King? (2006), Riverside (2011), and My Daughter La Chola (2013). Their translations from Spanish have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Guernica, Bombay Gin, The Kenyon Review, Translation Review, and Mandorla. For The Hormone of Darkness: A Playlist (Graywolf Press) translator-poet Matuk drew from four volumes spanning Peruvian writer and media artist Tilsa Otta’s career.

JOEY “WRECKED” MAYA is the former drummer of the first-generation Miami Beach punk band The Reactions. A product of the 1980s South Florida music scene, he knows it intimately. Maya progressed to the national stage as a member of the bands Battalion of Saints and Circus of Power. Wanting more, he traded in his drumsticks to work on Wall Street. His memoir, The Drummer of Miami Beach: The Story of Joey Wrecked (Jitney Books), was published in 2018. Maya has also written the books A Punk on Wall Street and The Punk Who Ruled the World, which are complete and looking for a publishing home.

JENNIFER MARITZA MCCAULEY is the author of the cross-genre collection Scar On/Scar Off and the short story collection When Trying to Return Home, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice. She has been granted fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio, and CantoMundo; is a fiction editor at Pleiades; and teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her poetry collection Kinds of Grace (Flowersong Press) explores the complicated facets of Blackness and Afro-Latinidad.

JILL MCCORKLE has the distinction of having published her first two novels on the same day in 1984. The New York Times Book Review wrote: “One suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist. With July 7th, she is also a full-grown one.” McCorkle has since published five other novels – most recently, Hieroglyphics: A Novel (Algonquin Books) – and four collections of short stories. Five of her books have been named to the NYT’s "Notable Books," and four of her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories. McCorkle is a recipient of a New England Independent Booksellers Association award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize. She was also recently inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. McCorkle has taught at Harvard University, Brandeis University, and North Carolina State University, where she remains affiliated with the MFA program in creative writing. She is a core faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

ALICE MCDERMOTT is the author of nine novels, all published by Farah, Straus and Giroux, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. She lives outside Washington, D.C.

MEG MEDINA is the Library of Congress’ 2023-2024 national ambassador for young people’s literature and the author of the Newbery Medal-winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears (Candlewick). She is also the author of award-winning young adult novels and picture books, including Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away (Candlewick), illustrated by Sonia Sánchez; Mango, Abuela, and Me (Candlewick), illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Award honor book; and Tía Isa Wants a Car (Candlewick), illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award for new writers. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she lives in Richmond, Virginia.