2024 Authors & Moderators

* = Moderator
** = Keynote

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Micro Marvels authors are listed here!

Kelly Andrew lost her hearing when she was four years old. She’s been telling stories ever since. Kelly lives in New England with her husband, two daughters, and a persnickety Boston Terrier. You can read more about her on her website, authorkellyandrew.com.
Instagram: @Kayaydrew

Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Keeper of Night duology, The Scarlet Alchemist duology, and the forthcoming adult horror Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. She grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her writing is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, and Irish), as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and a MS in library and information science from Simmons University.
@kylieleebaker
@kylieyamashiro

Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and international bestselling author of The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places, and The Fifth Petal, which was chosen #1 of Strand Magazine’s Top 25 Books of 2017 and as a Massachusetts Book Award “must read.” Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages and has been an Amazon Best of the Month and a People Magazine Pick. Barry was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post, and in Writer’s Digest’s Author in Progress. Brunonia has co-chaired the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee and served as the Executive Director of the Salem Literary Festival in 2014 and 2015, as well as on Grub Street’s Development Committee. Currently at work on her 4th book, Bru lives in Salem with her husband, Gary Ward, and their aussie-doodle, Rafferty.
Web: BrunoniaBarry.com

Suzanne Berne is the author of five novels: The Blue Window, The Dogs of Littlefield, The Ghost at the Table, A Perfect Arrangement, and A Crime in the Neighborhood, which won Great Britain’s Orange Prize, now The Women’s Prize. Her nonfiction book, Missing Lucile, is part memoir and part biography. She has also written frequently for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and published essays and articles in numerous magazines. For many years she taught creative writing, first at Harvard University and then at Boston College and at the Ranier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, WA. Currently, she is an Affiliate Scholar at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She and her husband live outside of Boston. They have two daughters.

**Geraldine Brooks is an Australian born novelist and journalist. She worked for a decade as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal before turning to fiction. She has written six novels including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning March and the bestsellers Horse, People of the Book and Year of Wonders. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her dog Bear and a donkey named Daisy.
Facebook: GeraldineBrooksAuthor
Instagram: ozbrooks100
X: @GeraldineBrooks

Betty Cayouette is an author, video content creator and videographer. She graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University and lives in Salem, MA. Her debut romance novel One Last Shot released this year.
Instagram/TikTok: @bettysbooklist

Kristen Ciccarelli grew up on a grape farm, dropped out of college, and worked various jobs before becoming an author. Some of her previous trades included: baker, potter, L’Arche assistant, and community bread oven coordinator. Kristen lives in Canada’s Niagara Peninsula with her husband and daughter. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Heartless Hunter, Edgewood and the Iskari series.

Chris Ciulla (shoe-la) has narrated over 480 titles in his audiobook career. He’s received 6 Earphones Awards from AudioFile Magazine, a 2022 SOVAS nomination, and an Odyssey Award. The founder of Leonardo Audio, he is also a TV and Film actor. Additionally, Chris is a frequent video game voice actor with over 30 characters in the Fallout game series and two primary characters in Starfield. Chris is married to his high school sweetheart Suzanne (don’t ask what year they graduated), loves to spend every day with his French Bulldog Leo and Boston Terrier Coco, and dearly misses his first-born Pug-boy Rocky.
Facebook: LeonardoAudiobooks
Instagram: bostonvoiceguy/
Web: leonardoaudio.com/

Jennifer Croft won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 International Booker Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is also the translator of Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery,Romina Paula’s August, Pedro Mairal’s The Woman from Uruguay, and Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob (a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). In 2023, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. She lives in Tulsa,Oklahoma with her husband and twins.
Facebook: jenniferlcroft
Instagram: jenniferlcroft
X: jenniferlcroft

Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novels The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister, both published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the U.S. and in dozens of other countries. The Marsh King’s Daughter was named one of the best books of 2017 by iBooks and many other booksellers and reviewers and was released by Lionsgate in 2023 as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn. Karen enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband on a small lake surrounded by forest in the middle of Michigan.
Facebook: KarenDionneAuthor
Instagram: @karendionneauthor
Web: karen-dionne.com
X: @KarenDionne

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie, a #4 New York Times bestseller and a New York Times “Editors Choice”. His work has been included inThe Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies, and his novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring BenKingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His 2013 novella collection, Dirty Love, was listed as a “Notable Book” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice” and a Kirkus “Starred Best Book of 2013”. His 2018 novel, Gone So Long, was named on many “Best Books” lists, including selection for The Boston Globe’s “Twenty Best Books of 2018” and “The Best Books of 2018, Top 100”, Amazon. His most recent novel, Such Kindness, was one of Amazon’s “The Best Books of 2023, Top 100”. His acclaimed collection of personal essays, Ghost Dog: On Killers and Kin, was published in March 2024. He is also the editor of Reaching Inside: 50 Acclaimed Authors on 100 Unforgettable Short Stories, (Godine,2023.) Mr. Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, three Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Facebook: /AndreDubusIII

LaNecia Edmonds is an audiobook narrator who started her career in 2020. Since then, she has worked with various publishers and independent authors to bring their books to audio. Often recording as Charlie L Wood, her work includes Dark Romance and Romances of different orientations. LaNecia is also a film actor with over 15 years of training and experience. When she is not in her home studio, she enjoys quality time with her family, practicing Taekwondo and feeding her chickens.
Instagram: @Lanecia.Edmonds @Charliel.wood.narrator
TikTok: @lanecia.edmonds @charliel_wood
Web: laneciaedmonds.com/

Jilly Gagnon is the author of Scenes of the Crime, All Dressed Up and the young adult novel #famous. Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston magazine, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her family and two black cats.
Instagram: @jillygagnon
X: @jillygagnon
Web: jillygagnon.com/

*JoeAnn Hart is the author of Arroyo Circle, a novel of reclamation in a time of loss, forthcoming from Green Writers Press in October 2024. In her prize-winning fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, characters struggle with Covid, ecological destruction, and grief as they attempt to find solace and restoration from a nature that is not always in a position to give back. It was published by Black Lawrence Press in September 2023. Other books include the crime memoir Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s, as well as Float, a dark comedy about plastics, and Addled, a social satire. Her short fiction and essays have been widely published, appearing in Slate.com, Orion, The Hopper, Prairie Schooner, The Sonora Review, Terrain.org, and many others. Her work explores the relationship between humans, their environments, and the more-than-human world.
Facebook: @JoeAnnHart.Author & @JoeAnnHart
Instagram: joeannhart76
X: @JoeAnnH

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, an associate professor of Black Studies and History at Amherst College and a 2022-23 fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is the author of Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods (2019). She is currently at work on a book about Lowell, Massachusetts, and its relationship to slavery.

Lori Haskins Houran is a former children’s book editor and the author of more than sixty books for kids, including Next to You, a School Library Journal Best Picture Book, and the Kirkus-starred Button Your Buttons. She is also the co-author with Donna Gephart of the WOOFMORE chapter book series, which Publishers Weekly calls “howlingly good.” Lori lives with her family on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
Instagram: @lorihaskinshouran

Published in 20+ languages, Daphne Kalotay’s books include the award-winning novels Russian Winter, Sight Reading, and Blue Hours and two story collections: Calamity and Other Stories, shortlisted for The Story Prize, and The Archivists, winner of the Grace Paley Prize and longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize and 2024 Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, MacDowell, and Yaddo, Kalotay lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and is a Special Program Instructor at Harvard University’s School of Continuing Education.

Sophie Kim has a penchant for writing stories that feature mythology, monsters, mystery, and magic. Her work includes young adult novels such as the Talons series and books on the adult spectrum such as The God and the Gumiho.
Web: sophiekimwrites.com

Adopted and raised as an only child by Mexican-American grandparents in Michigan, E.J. Lavery’s imagination was fueled by books. Her 15 year career in theater has given her the opportunity to inhabit many lives. Persistently curious, she pursued a B.A. in theater at the University of Michigan, and then a B.S. in biology at the University of Massachusetts. E.J.’s  passion for nature and animals led her to devote her research scholarship to the ER at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. She has explored lava tubes in Iceland, traced the steps of Lord Byron in Croatia, and fangirled at Beethoven’s final resting place. When not spinning tales for the world, you can find E.J. outdoors with her husband, chasing after their Australian Shepherd, Adelaide, or stealing away for some quiet moments with her piano or cello.
Facebook: ej.lavery/
Instagram: e.j.lavery/
Web: www.ej-lavery.com/

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels, including Pictures of You and Days of Wonder, a CBS TV Bookclub pick, now optioned for film. Her novels have been translated into a dozen languages, been Indie Next Picks and selected for Best of the Year lists. A book critic for People, her essays have appeared in New York Magazine, the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and more. She is the co-founder of A Mighty Blaze, a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow, and was awarded a MidAtlantic Arts Foundation grant this year for portions of Days of Wonder.

Ken Liu  is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.
Instagram: @kenliu.author
X: @kyliu99
Web: kenliu.name

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.

Scott Magoon is the illustrator of several acclaimed picture books, including the New York Times bestselling Rescue &Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship by Jessica Kensky & Patrick Downes, Misunderstood Shark series by Ame Dyckman and the Spoon series by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. He is also the author/illustrator of the Extincts series of graphic novels, Linus The Little Yellow Pencil, Breathe and The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot. He enjoys distance running,jazz music, travel and lives with his wife and sons in Massachusetts.
Web: scottmagoon.com

Marion McNabb is a novelist and award-winning screenwriter who studied film at the Tisch School at NYU and graduated from Arizona State with a degree in Theater. She lived for many years in Los Angeles working as a screenwriter on, among other things, the preschool animated Nick, Jr. program Rainbow Rangers but the siren’s call pulled her back to Cape Cod where she now lives with her family looking for mermaids and working on her next novel.
Facebook: Marion McNabb
Instagram: @McNabbMarion
X: @MarionMc

When not writing, reading or recommending picture books, Cathy Ballou Mealey volunteers for organizations supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. Fun fact: Squirrels appear in all three of her current picture books! A former college instructor and administrator, she is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Graduate School of Education. She lives north of Boston with her husband, son and daughter.
Instagram: @catballoumealey
X/Twitter: @catballoumealey

*Carol Monda’s early career played out on stages such as HB Studio, The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage and Manhattan Theatre Club. She has narrated over 450 audiobook titles and her work has earned multiple Audie and Earphones Awards, Years’ Best mentions and Audie and SOVAS nominations. Carol also directs audiobooks privately and for Hachette Book Group. She has been the voice of the Turner Classic Film Festival since its 2010 inception.
Facebook: /profile.php?id=61554511411505
Instagram.: carolmondavo/

A lifelong New Englander, Sara Sheckells grew up shuttling between an indie bookstore and an antiques shop. Storytelling, in all its forms, drew her to dabble in drama and cobble together a patchwork of studies in radio, television, and writing. She was a radio host and performed as a costumed tour guide before launching a long-term career in academia. Sara came to audiobook narration as an avid listener and long-time pupil of vocal performance. Her previous experiences working in counseling and course instruction further fuel her delivery, which is equal parts empathetic and authoritative. An Earphones Award winning narrator for ensemble narration, Sara is featured among AudioFile Magazine’s Voices to Know. Forever bookish, Sara has a fondness for magical realism, memoirs, thrillers, feminist bits and pieces, spooky stuff, and anything featuring dogs or witches.
Facebook: /SaraSoundsNarrates/
Instagram: /sara_sounds/
X: @SaraSoundsVO

Susan Solomon is professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the founding director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. She is known for pioneering work on the Antarctic ozone layer and for landmark studies of the timescales of climate change. She has received many scientific honors and awards, including the US National Medal of Science, the Grande Médaille from the French Academy of Sciences, and the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2008, she was included in Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people. She is the author of The Coldest March, which was named a New York Times notable book and an Economist book of the year.

Shubha Sunder is the author of Boomtown Girl, a story collection that won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award and was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in places like Catapult, The Common, and Narrative Magazine, and been shortlisted for Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Mayor’s Office of Art & Culture, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Her debut novel, Optional Practical Training, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She teaches creative writing at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Diane Stern

Peter Swanson is the Sunday Times and New York Times best selling author of 11 novels, includingThe Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for theCWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year. His books have been translated into over 30 languages, and his stories, poetry, and features have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine.A graduate of Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and EmersonCollege, he lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts with his wife and cats.
Facebook.com/petermswanson
Instagram: petermswanson
X: @peterswanson3

Jean Trounstine is an author, activist, and educator who has written extensively about the criminal legal system. She worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for a decade, where she directed eight plays for prisoners—resulting in her highly praised book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison. Her groundbreaking work is considered the first Shakespeare program launched in the U.S. Trounstine co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL), an innovative alternative sentencing program. In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her 30 years of work in literature and theatre. Motherlove, published by Concord Free Press is her first fiction. She has written six other books—from poetry to nonfiction—including Boy with a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice.
Web: jeantrounstine.com
X: @JusticeWithJean

Erica Waters is a lifelong Southerner who now lives in Salem, Massachusetts. She writes dark fantasy and horror for young adults. Her second novel, The River Has Teeth, won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel and was also an Indie Next pick and a Kirkus Best Young Adult Book of 2021. Erica’s other works include Ghost Wood SongThe Restless Dark, and All That Consumes Us. She is also a contributor to the bestselling folk horror anthology The Gathering Dark. 

Hannah Weber is a German-Canadian writer and critic, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize committee. Her work has been published in World Literature Today, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, and The Calvert Journal, among others. She’s been reviewing literature in translation for a decade and has interviewed publishers, translators, and international authors, including Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk. She is currently translating the essays of Afro-German writer May Ayim. She lives on the south coast of England.
Instagram: @hhansolo
X: @HannahSWeber

**Ilyon Woo is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom—an instant New York Times best-seller, one of the New York Times “Ten Best Books of 2023,” a People Magazine “Top 10 Book of the Year,” and a finalist for a Kirkus Prize, also named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily. Ilyon is previously the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.
Facebook/Instagram: ilyonwooauthor
Web: https://ilyonwoo.com/