* = Moderator
** = Keynote

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Derf Backderf is the international bestselling, award winning author of My Friend Dahmer, Trashed, Kent State, and The Dissidents. He is the recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, appeared in more than 150 new papers for nearly 25 years. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and, like one of The Masses political cartoonists George Bellows, is an alumnus of Ohio State University.
Bluesky: derfbackderf.bsky.social
Instagram: /derf_backderf/?hl=en

Rebecca Baum is a novelist and ghostwriter. With her latest novel, The Brood, she wades into the wonderfully troubled waters of horror. Her prior book, Lifelike Creatures, was longlisted for the 2021 Crook’s Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South. A native of rural Louisiana, she has called New York City home for almost thirty years. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and favorite karaoke partner, Gary.
Instagram:/baum.rebecca/
Website: rebeccabaum.com

Nancy Bernhard is an historian of American political history and journalism, novelist, and yoga teacher. Born in Brooklyn, she lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and studies the ways movement, community, and storytelling can heal political and sexual trauma.
Bluesky: /nancybernhard.bsky.social
Facebook: nancy.bernhard.author/
Instagram: nancy.bernhard.author/
Threads: /bernhard_nancy

Jennifer N. Brown is from New York City and after falling in love with Chaucer in college, pursued a Ph.D. in medieval literature. Her dissertation and subsequent books and articles have mostly been about devotional literature and medieval women as authors, subjects, and patrons of literary culture in medieval Europe. She has taught medieval literature at several institutions, most recently at Marymount Manhattan College where she taught in the English and World Literatures department for over 15 years. She is currently serving as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Boston, where she lives with her husband, two children and two miniature dachshunds: Athena and Apollo.
Instagram: /jennifernbrownwrites

Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island. She is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Beneath the Poet’s House, How to Fake a Haunting, and the forthcoming Threshing Rock, as well as the Indie Horror Book Award-winning collection, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated novelette, “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell,” and co-editor of the Aurealis Award-nominated We Are Providence and the Australasian Shadows- and Ditmar Awards-nominated Monsters in the Mills. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine, where she now teaches creative writing.
Bluesky: /christaqua.bsky.social
Facebook: /christaqua
Instagram: /christaqua/

Michele Cobb is a is a leading expert in the $2.2 billion North American audiobook market, and over the past decade of digital transformation has been a sought-after speaker on the subject. She has worked with numerous global brands in audiobooks, publishing, and podcasts, and specializes in strategic business development. Michele has held executive leadership positions at five publishing industry organizations, and has led over 50 major events, including awards and conferences. Michele is currently Enterprise Advertising Director for Kirkus Reviews, the publisher of independent audiobook company MMB Media and is Executive Producer of the award-winning Stories of Impact Podcast.
Linkedin: /micheleleecobb/

Tanya Eby is a USA Today bestselling writer of popular fiction and an award winning narrator of over 1400 titles, many of which are mystery/thriller and horror. She writes across genres but is currently writing horror books and short stories.
Facebook: /TanyaEbyNarrator
Instagram: /Tanya_Eby
Threads: /Tanya-Eby

Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of twenty-five books including The Lioness of Boston, based on the life of trailblazer Isabella Stewart Gardner, now in its eleventh printing and recently featured as a clue on Jeopardy! Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, and The Journal of the American Medical Association, among other places, as well as featured and read aloud on National Public Radio and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She grew up half in the UK and half in Boston where she lives now with her spouse and four children. Her latest novel, Love & Other Monsters, is the untold origin story of Frankenstein told from the perspective Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister and Lord Byron’s lover, who changed the course of literature forever—and then was erased.
Facebook: /emily.franklin.528
Instagram: /emilyfranklinauthor

Josh Funk is a software engineer and the author of books like the Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast series, How to Code a Sandcastle, The Dino Door, Dear Dragon, My Pet Feet, the It’s Not a Fairy Tale series, Lost in the Library, and more. His books have sold more than half a million copies worldwide and been translated into a dozen languages. He has presented (and virtually presented) at over 980 schools and libraries in the last decade+ since his first book was released. Josh is terrible at writing bios, so please help fill in the blanks. Josh enjoys _______ during ________ and has always loved __________. He has played ____________ since age __ and his biggest fear in life is being eaten by a __________.
Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube: @joshfunkbooks
Website: joshfunkbooks.com

Vicki Johnson mines her own experiences of childhood and parenthood to write heartfelt and inclusive stories in diverse settings, exploring big ideas like kindness and bravery, and always centering the child’s inner compass. Her debut picture book Molly’s Tuxedo (Little Bee Books, 2023) illustrated by Gillian Reid, received multiple accolades, including an NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Recommendation and inclusion on the ALA Rainbow Book List and the top ten K-2 CBC Teacher Favorites list. Her second book, Mac Wears a Hat, arrived April 2026 from the same creative team. Johnson is a Southern writer who lives in Western Mass, where she tends to several rescue animals and one college kid.
Bluesky, IG, Threads: @vickijohnsonwrites

Stephen P. Kiernan is the author of six novels, two nonfiction books, and 20 years of newspaper journalism — a total of more than five million words in print. His work has been published in many languages and alphabets. His novel The Curiosity is in development as a television streaming series. He has been a resident at arts colonies including the Chateau Orquevaux and Yaddo. Pollock’s Last Lover is his latest work. He lives in Vermont.
Facebook: /StephenPKiernan
Instagram and Threads: stephenpkiernan1
Website: www.stephenpkiernan.com

Kaija Langley was raised on a healthy diet of library books, music and theater performances, and visits to the family farm in rural North Carolina.  The author of the award-winning picture book, When Langston Dances, she loves long road trips, dancing wherever music moves her, and adventures near and far.  She currently lives, writes, and plays in Massachusetts with her Beloved and dog Zara.
Instagram: mizzkalwrites71

Aleese Lin is a fantasy author whose published work ranges from romantic fantasy novels to weird short fiction. She has received multiple honors, including being named a 2022 Lambda Literary fellow and a Tin House workshop alumnus, and she founded her university’s first bilingual creative writing club and student magazine. Library Journal recommended her debut novel, Samantha Spuk: Paranormal Wedding Planner, declaring it a “warm and cozy romantasy” and ”hilarious.” Aleese is also a contributor to the acclaimed climate fiction anthology, Onward: 16 Stories of Climate Change to Inspire Hope. Aleese’s curiosity led her on unusual paths: she completed her Bachelor’s in Japan and her graduate degree in England; she interned with the Embassy of Afghanistan; she spent a summer on an archaeological dig; and she has traveled to over thirty countries. Presently, she lives in a hillside cottage overlooking Boston, MA with her husband, children, and mischievous cats.
Instagram: @aleeselin

Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D., is a writer, teacher, and scholar with specializations in contemporary literature, memoir, and comics and graphic novels. She is author of How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and co-editor of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself. Tahneer regularly writes cultural criticism for publications including NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. She recently wrote and recorded a three-hour lecture series for The Great Courses, Why Memoir Matters: Learning from the Lives of Others, which is available on Audible. Tahneer is Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University–New York City, where she teaches classes in literature, comics and other media, and journalism.
Bluesky: /tahneeroksman.bsky.social
Instagram: /tahneer79/
Website: tahneeroksman.com

Beverly Cooper Pierce has been an academic librarian, registered nurse in holistic care, family historian, writer, actor, director, and mother—experiences all braided now into a magical-realist historical fiction. The Rowans, her debut novel, holds the 2026 Silver Medal for Visionary Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Growing up in Salem, Bev had no idea that John and Elizabeth Proctor, both convicted of witchery, were her father’s sixth great-grandparents, or that certain seventeenth-century houses along the coast held family stories. After years in Minnesota, she lives and writes now on Cape Ann, at work on her sequel, Doe’s Leap, set in Maine.
Website:  beverlycooperpierce.com

Victor Suthammanont is the author of Hollow Spaces (Counterpoint Press), his debut novel and a New York Times Book Review Best Mystery and Notable Book of 2025. Victor is the author of the Audible Original Little Surrenders. His second novel, The Henchman (Counterpoint Press), will be released in 2027. He lives in New York City, where he is a lawyer. He attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama. Victor then attended New York Law School, where he served as an Articles Editor on the Law Review. He served for ten years on the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Enforcement, including as a Senior Trial Counsel and as the Enforcement Counsel for Chair Gary Gensler. He left the SEC in January 2025.
Bluesky, Instagram: @victorsuth

Maria van Lieshout was born and raised near Amsterdam, where she spent many weekends in the Museum Quarter row house where her grandparents lived with her artist aunt and metalsmith uncle. Drawing while her aunt painted and pecking stories on a typewriter while her uncle soldered metals inspired her love for drawing, creating and writing. After high school in the Netherlands, Maria studied graphic design at GWU in DC and worked in design and innovation at Coca-Cola. In 2000, Maria became illustrator full-time. She has created several picture books. Her graphic novel Song of a Blackbird was partly inspired by events that affected her own family during WWII. It received five starred reviews, was awarded a Michael L. Printz Honor and it was long-listed for the National Book Award. Maria lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their son.
Bluesky: @vanlieshoutstudio.bsky.social/
Facebook: @vanlieshoutstudio/
Instagram: @vanlieshoutstudio/

Karen Winn is the author of The Society (Dutton, 2026) and Our Little World (Dutton, 2022). Her short stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Hippocampus, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. For her undergraduate studies she attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she may or may not have belonged to a secret society. Prior to becoming an author, Karen was a nurse and a nurse practitioner. Originally from New Jersey, Karen now lives in the charming Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two children, and their 100-pound Bernedoodle.
Facebook, Instagram: @karenwinnauthor