RECKONINGS & RECRIMINATIONS

IDRA NOVEY is the award-winning author of Ways to Disappear and Those Who Knew: A Novel. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She teaches at Princeton University and in the MFA program at New York University.

JENNIFER JACKSON is a vice president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, which she joined in 2002. Since then she's worked with authors such as Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger and Stella Maris), Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow), and Kevin Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians). Pineapple Street (Pamela Dorman Books), is her first book.

MARY BETH KEANE is the author of three previous novels, The Walking People: A Novel, Fever: A Novel, and Ask Again, Yes: A Novel – a New York Times bestseller. Malcolm Gephardt, the Half Moon's handsome and gregarious longtime bartender, has always dreamed of owning a bar. When his boss finally retires, Malcolm stretches to buy the place. He sees unmeasurable magic and potential in the place and hopes to transform it into a bigger success, but struggles to stay afloat. His smart and confident wife, Jess, has devoted herself to her law career, and now she is facing the idea that motherhood may not be in the cards for her. Like Malcolm, she feels her youth slipping away and wonders how to reshape her future. The Half Moon: A Novel (Scribner)takes place over one week when Malcolm learns shocking news about Jess, a patron of the bar goes missing, and a blizzard hits the town of Gillam, trapping everyone in place. Keane explores the disappointments and unexpected consolations of midlife, the many forms forgiveness can take, the complicated intimacy of small-town living, and what it means to be a family.

REBECCA MAKKAI is the author of the novels I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel, The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House: A Novel, and The Borrower: A Novel, and Music for Wartime: Stories. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Great Believers received the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. A 2022 Guggenheim fellow, Makkai is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is the artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago. She splits her time between Vermont and the campus of the midwestern boarding school where her husband teaches.