Authors

ACE ATKINS is a New York Times bestselling author. He started his writing career as a crime beat reporter in Florida. Don’t Let the Devil Ride (William Morrow) is his 30th novel. His previous novels include 11 books in the Quinn Colson series and multiple true crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. In 2010, he was chosen by Robert B. Parker’s family to continue the iconic Spenser series, adding 10 novels to the franchise. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family.

BERWICK AUGUSTIN is an accomplished Haitian American author, educator, and educational consultant known for promoting culturally responsive education. With more than two decades of experience as a teacher, reading coach, and assistant principal, Augustin has dedicated his career to enhancing educational practices and amplifying cultural diversity. He founded Evoke180 Publishing, where he creates and delivers innovative training programs, literature, and spoken-word albums that bridge cultural gaps. His work includes the books The Education Formula: Maximizing The Village (Evoke180 LLC), which emphasizes the importance of community involvement in education. A dynamic keynote speaker and poet, Augustin leverages his rich Haitian heritage and immigrant experience to inspire children, youth, and educators alike​.

SHALOM AUSLANDER was nominated for the Koret Award for writers under 35. He has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, and The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's This American Life. Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin's Lament, and the novel Hope: A Tragedy. He is the creator of Showtime's Happyish. He lives in Los Angeles.

LINNEA AXELSSON is a Sámi-Swedish writer, born in the province of North Bothnia in Sweden. In 2018, she was awarded the August Prize for this book. She lives in Stockholm.

GINA MARÍA BALIBRERA earned an MFA in prose from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers' Program. She’s been awarded grants from Aspen Words, Tin House, the Rackham Foundation, and the Periplus Collective, as well as a Tyson Award, the Aura Estrada Prize, and the Under the Volcano Sandra Cisneros Fellowship.

ISABEL BANTA is a writer, book publicist, and indie bookseller based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from the University of Virginia. Honey: A Novel (Celadon Books) is her debut novel.

CARY BARBOR is the host of the Gulf Coast Life Book Club as well as a reporter for WGCU, the NPR station in Fort Myers, Florida. She has been a producer for The Leonard Lopate Show on New York City’s WNYC and public radio’s Studio 360. In addition to radio, she has a career writing for magazines, including Salon, Teen Vogue, More, New York Magazine, and Health. She is a student in the Randolph College MFA program.

LEIGH BARDUGO is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Familiar: A Novel (Flatiron Books) and Ninth House (Flatiron Books). She is also the creator of The Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series), which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy; the Six of Crows duology; the King of Scars duology; and more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Bardugo lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

MALENE BARNETT is a multidisciplinary artist, textile surface designer, and community builder. She earned her MFA in ceramics from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and undergraduate degrees in fashion illustration and textile surface design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Barnett received a Fulbright Award to travel to Jamaica in 2022–23 as the visiting artist at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston. Her art reflects her African Caribbean heritage, building on her ancestral legacy of mark-making as a visual identity, and has been exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, including the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling in New York City, and the African American Museum of Dallas. Her art and design work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Galerie, Elle Décor, Architectural Digest, Departures, and Interior Design. Barnett is also the founder of the Black Artists + Designers Guild, which supports independent Black makers globally. She resides in Brooklyn, New York.

DAVE BARRY is the author of more bestsellers than you can count on two hands, including Swamp Story, Lessons from Lucy, Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys, Dave Barry Turns Forty, and Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up. He is also the lead guitarist of the literary rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders. No, really. A wildly popular syndicated columnist, Barry won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He lives in Miami.

SAM BARRY is an author, freelance editor, musician, and publishing professional. He is the author of How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons. He co-authored Write That Book Already! The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now with his late wife, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, and Always a Song: Singers, Songwriters, Sinners, and Saints – My Story of the Folk Music Revival with Ellen Harper, with a foreword by Ben Harper. As a member of the literary rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, Barry edited and co-authored Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All with his bandmates Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., Matt Groening, Greg Iles, Stephen King, James McBride, Roger McGuinn, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, and Scott Turow. Previously, Barry was an ordained Presbyterian minister, worked for HarperCollins, created and directed Book Passage’s Path to Publishing program, and wrote the popular Author Enabler column in BookPage. Barry lives, writes, and plays music in the San Francisco Bay area.

LOUIS BAYARD is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me: A Novel (Algonquin Books) and The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (Harper), which was adapted into a global No. 1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale. Bayard’s articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, and The Paris Review. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

AGUSTINA BAZTERRICA nació en Buenos Aires en 1974 y es licenciada en Artes por la UBA. Ha publicado las novelas Matar a la niña (2013) y Cadáver exquisito (2017), ganadora del Premio Clarín de Novela. Su obra ha sido traducida y presentada en numerosos países, incluyendo Francia, Finlandia, Alemania e Inglaterra, y próximamente en Estados Unidos, Taiwán, Arabia Saudita y Holanda. Es gestora y curadora cultural del Ciclo de Arte «Siga al Conejo Blanco» y coordina talleres de lectura y escritura. Llega a la Feria con su nueva novela Las indignas (Alfaguara) en la que en un presente desolador varias mujeres viven confinadas en la Casa de la Hermandad Sagrada, sometidas a los designios de un culto religioso. Una distopía perturbadora, donde resplandece la naturaleza oscura de una falsa divinidad, un dios abusivo, pero también la forma subrepticia, aunque poderosa, de la amistad.

CESAR A. BECERRA is a historian, writer, and adventurer whose projects and expeditions have been covered in major newspapers around the United States. He's the author of The Kaimiloa Project (Free Range Publishing) and five previous books. An author of several articles focusing on the Everglades, the Miami Herald called him “an Everglades Evangelist,” while The New Times named him “Miami's most Peripatetic Historian.” Born in Miami to Cuban parents, he honored his heritage by publishing an award-winning full-color weekly journal entitled Cuban Dreams, focusing on the Centennial of the Spanish-American War that impacted Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean. Becerra leads monthly boat tours in Miami and has paddled more than  400 miles in a kayak around the southern half of Florida. He teaches part-time at the Osher Institute of the University of Miami, Florida International University, and was a visiting lecturer at Miami Dade College.

AMANDA BECKER is a 2023 Nieman Fellow and Washington correspondent for The 19th. She has covered the U.S. Congress, the White House, and elections for more than a decade. Becker previously worked at Reuters and CQ Roll Call. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Glamour magazine, and her political coverage has also been broadcast on National Public Radio. She lives in Washington, D.C.

RUTH BEHAR is a Cuban-born anthropologist and writer of books for young people. She won the Pura Belpré Award for her middle-grade novel Lucky Broken Girl (Nancy Paulsen Books) and her novel Letters from Cuba (Nancy Paulsen Books) was selected for Kirkus Reviews’ list of best historical fiction. Her picture book, Tía Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey (Knopf Books for Young Readers), is on Kirkus’ and School Library Journal’s best book lists. With her son, Gabriel Frye-Behar, Behar co-authored Pepita Meets Bebita (Knopf Books for Young Readers), a picture book about the joys of family. Her new novel, Across So Many Seas (Nancy Paulsen Books), has been described by Sandra Cisneros as a book that “sings with poetry and history and story all at once.” The first Latina to win a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Behar teaches at the University of Michigan.

JENNIFER BELLE is the bestselling author of four novels: Going Down (Riverhead), which was named best debut novel by Entertainment Weekly and optioned for the screen 27 times; High Maintenance (Riverhead); Little Stalker: A Novel (Riverhead); and The Seven Year Bitch (Riverhead). She is also the author of Animal Stackers (Hyperion Book CH), a picture book for children illustrated by David McPhail. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Harper’s Bazaar, Ms. Magazine, BlackBook, The New York Observer, Post Road Magazine, and many anthologies.

BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS is a Peabody- and Eisner Award-winning comics creator, a New York Times bestselling author, and one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. He is the co-creator of Miles Morales, Iron Heart, Secret Invasion, and dozens of other characters and stories. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

EVAN P. BENNETT is an associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. He is the author of When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont (University Press of Florida) and co-editor of Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families since Reconstruction (University Press of Florida).

A.J. BERMUDEZ is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them (University of Iowa Press), winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. She’s a recipient of the Page Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Diverse Voices Award, and the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Her screenwriting has been honored at Sundance, SXSW, and the LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival, and her work has received support from the Steinbeck Fellowship, the Banff Centre, the Watermill Center, and the Nawat Fes Residency in Morocco. She currently serves as visiting assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Miami.

MARIE-HELENE BERTINO is the author of Parakeet: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas: A Novel (Crown), and Safe as Houses: Stories (University of Iowa Press). She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and the Mississippi Review Prize, as well as fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s The Center for Fiction. Her work has twice been featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” Bertino teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

R. DEREK BLACK (they/she) is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Chicago. Since 2016, they have spoken to many audiences at universities, foundations, institutions, museums, synagogues, and churches. They received the Elie Wiesel Award and a humanitarian award from the Anti-Defamation League. The Klansman’s Son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Antiracism (Abrams Press) is Black’s first book.

MADELEINE BLAIS was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years and won a Pulitzer Prize before joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts’ department of journalism. She is the author of Queen of the Court: The Many Lives of Tennis Legend Alice Marble (Grove Press), To the New Owners: A Martha's Vineyard Memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press), In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle: A True Story of Hoop Dreams and One Very Special Team (Atlantic Monthly Press), Uphill Walkers: A Memoir of a Family (Atlantic Monthly Press), and The Heart is an Instrument: Portraits of Journalism (University of Massachusetts Press), a collection of her journalism work. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

RICHARD BLANCO was selected by President Barack Obama as the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history. Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s many collections of poetry are characterized by his negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging. His most recent, Homeland of My Body, reassesses traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey, and The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and currently serves as education ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an associate professor at Florida International University. In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever poet laureate of Miami-Dade County.

KEREN BLANKFELD is a long-form journalist with a special interest in investigative narrative nonfiction. A former staff writer for Forbes, her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, the Toronto Star, and other publications. She teaches reporting and writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has also taught at New York University’s graduate school. She has been a guest on CNN, BBC World News, and E! Entertainment. In 2013, Blankfeld served as a creative executive at New Regency Productions, where she worked with screenwriters and playwrights to develop material for movies and TV shows. She holds a B.A. in international relations and English from Tufts University and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University. Blankfeld lives in New York with her husband and two sons.

STEPHEN G. BLOOM is an award-winning journalist for the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News, and a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa. He is the author of seven nonfiction narrative books, including The Brazil Chronicles (University of Missouri), Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality (University of California Press), The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold (Regan Arts.), The Oxford Project (Welcome Books), Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls (St. Martin's Press), and Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His articles have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. In 2020, he was chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists as the university journalism professor of the year.

ROY BLOUNT Jr. is the author of 24 books about everything from the Pittsburgh Steelers (About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, a chronicle of the 1973 season) and Robert E. Lee to what dogs are thinking. His latest is Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations (Sarah Crichton Books). His essays, articles, stories, verses, and even drawings have appeared in 171 periodicals, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Rolling Stone. He performs regularly with the literary rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders. Born in Indianapolis and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, the painter Joan Griswold.

CHARLES BOCK is The New York Times bestselling author of the novels Beautiful Children: A Novel (Random House) and Alice & Oliver: A Novel (Random House). Bock is a creative writing professor at New York University. The father of two daughters, he lives in New York City.

EUGENIA BONE is a food and nature writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, and BBC Science Focus Magazine. A former president of the New York Mycological Society and the author of Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms (Rodale Books), Bone appeared as an expert in the documentary Fantastic Fungi and has deep ties throughout the mushroom community. She is also an award-nominated cookbook author and chef. She lives in New York City.