Paula McLain  is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels, The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, and Love and Ruin.

She was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California Court System, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. When she aged out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nurses aid in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto-plant worker, a cocktail waitress–before discovering she could (and very much wanted to) write. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996.

She is the author of The Paris Wife, a New York Times and international bestseller, which has been published in thirty-four languages. The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is also the author of two collections of poetry; a memoir, Like Family, Growing up in Other People’s Houses; and a first novel, A Ticket to Ride. She lives with her family in Cleveland.

“[Paula] McLain has brought Hadley to life in a novel that begins in a rush of early love. . . . A moving portrait of a woman slighted by history, a woman whose . . . story needed to be told.”

—THE BOSTON GLOBE

“The Paris Wife creates the kind of out-of-body reading experience that dedicated book lovers yearn for, nearly as good as reading Hemingway for the first time—and it doesn’t get much better than that.” 

—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

“Exquisitely evocative . . . This absorbing, illuminating book gives us an intimate view of a sympathetic and perceptive woman, the striving writer she married, the glittering and wounding Paris circle they were part of. . . . McLain reinvents the story of Hadley and Ernest’s romance with the lucid grace of a practiced poet.” 

—THE SEATTLE TIMES

Christina Baker Kline

It’s one thing to write accurately about real people and real events of the past. It’s another thing to pull a character from one’s imagination. Christina Baker Kline has shown with her best-selling books A Piece of the World (2017) and Orphan Train (2013) that she can do both at the same time.

Christina Olson, the subject of Andrew Wyeth’s best-known painting, Christina’s World, rented a studio to the artist, and was his friend and confidant for 30 years. Kline breathes life into Olson by blending deep historical research, her own knowledge of Maine, and even aspects of her own grandmother, also born in 1893.

Kline worked a similar magic in Orphan Train, which shed light on the 1854-1929 practice of relocating orphaned children from East Coast slums to the rural Midwest – where some were integrated into loving families and others harshly treated as indentured servants.

Orphan Train spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, including five weeks at No. 1, has 3.5 million copies in print, and is under consideration for a movie.

Kline enraptured a capacity crowd at the 2018 Kauai Writers Festival leading a class with Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Her class for 2019 will be announced soon.

In addition to five other novels – including Bird in Hand, Desire Lines and Sweet Water – Kline has written or edited five works of nonfiction on the topics of parenting, grief, and women’s studies. She has taught at Yale, New York University, and the University of Virginia, and served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University. She lives with her husband and sons in New Jersey and Maine.

Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Greg lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born a slave.

Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of twelve New York Times bestsellers. His novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. His trilogy, which begins with Natchez Burning (2014) continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and New York Times #1 bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl.

“I defy you to find a way to start it and put it down; as long as it is, I wished it were longer.  There’s a bonus: you’ll finish knowing a great deal about the Deep South’s painful struggle toward racial equality, and the bloody road between Then and Now.  Only a southern man could have written this book, and thank God Greg Iles was there to do the job.  This is an amazing work of popular fiction.”

—Stephen King

“I don’t know how Iles did it, but every single page of Natchez Burning is a cilffhanger that will keep you devouring just one more chapter before you put it down to eat, work, or go to bed.  A mystery rooted in the real-life divides of the Deep South, this ambitious, unique novel is the perfect marriage of a history lesson and a thriller. Greg?  You owe me some sleep!”

—Jodi Picoult

Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, inspirational speaker, and New York Times Bestselling Author of thirty novels. Her work has garnered or been nominated for many awards, including the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, The Carol Award, the Christy Award, and the RT Booklovers Reviewer’s Choice Award. Her blockbuster hit, Before We Were Yours remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for over a year, was Publishers Weekly’s #3 longest running bestseller of 2017, and was voted by readers as the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award winner for historical fiction. Before We Were Yours has been a book club favorite worldwide and to date has sold over one million copies.

The group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with six others as recipients of the National Civics Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. Wingate’s novels have been translated into over thirty-five languages. Booklist summed up her work by saying, “Lisa Wingate is, quite simply, a master storyteller.”

Lisa was inspired to become a writer by a first-grade teacher who said she expected to see Lisa’s name in a magazine one day. Lisa also entertained childhood dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and winning the National Finals Rodeo but was stalled by a mental block against backflips on the balance beam and by parents who stubbornly refused to finance a rodeo career. She was lucky enough to marry into a big family of Southern tall tale enthusiasts who never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Lisa writes her novels at home in Texas where she is part of the Wingate clan of storytellers. Of all the things she treasures about being a writer, she enjoys connecting with people, both real and imaginary, the most.

Amy Ferris is an author, screenwriter, editor and playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions From A Midlife Crisis debuted theatrically (Off-Broadway) in 2012. Ruth Pennebaker of The New York Times called her memoir “poignant, free-wheeling, cranky and funny.” Amy edited the anthology, SHADES OF BLUE, Writers on Depression, Suicide and Feeling Blue (Seal Press), co-edited the anthology DANCING AT THE SHAME PROM (Seal Press), and has contributed to numerous anthologies including He Said What? The Drinking Diaries, Exit Laughing, Hillary Clinton: Love Her Love Her Not, and The Buddha Next Door. Amy has written for both film and TV. Her screenplays include Mr. Wonderful (Directed by Anthony Minghella) and Funny Valentines (Directed by Julie Dash). Her YA novel, a greater goode (yes, all lowercase) was published by Houghton Mifflin. In 2018 Amy was awarded and named one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women’s eNews. She is currently co-authoring a book for HarperCollins.

To learn more about Amy visit her website marryinggeorgeclooney.com

Nicholas Delbanco, making his third appearance at the KWF, has had a storied career as a writer, editor, teacher and literary judge. He has written 29 books of fiction and non-fiction (plus essays, short stories and reviews). He founded and led Bennington College’s writing program and is Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where he headed its renowned MFA and Hopwood Awards programs.

Delbanco has chaired the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, and served as judge for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner award in fiction. He wrote the well-loved books on the craft of writing, The Sincerest Form: Writing Fiction by Imitation, and, with Alan Cheuse, the college text Literature, Craft and Voice.

Author Valerie Laken wrote of Delbanco’s role as a mentor: “He’s made a career of bringing together, supporting, and celebrating writers, and in doing that he made them all believe—not just in themselves, but in the value of literature itself.”

About his recent work The Count of Concord , Russell Banks wrote that Delbanco “brought his entire array of amazing gifts into play and has written a wonderfully sad, funny, bawdy, and intellectually adventurous novel.”

In the introduction to his non-fiction work about older artists, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age (2011), Delbanco wrote:

“This book is about tribal elders in the world of art. What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue.”

To learn more about Nicholas visit his website www.nicholasdelbanco.com

Elena Delbanco  recently retired after teaching for twenty-seven years at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Before moving to Ann Arbor, she worked at Bennington College in Vermont, where she and her husband, the writer Nicholas Delbanco, together with the late John Gardner, founded the Bennington Writing Workshops. Delbanco has long been engaged in the world of classical music. Her father was the renowned cellist Bernard Greenhouse (of the Beaux Arts Trio), who owned the Countess of Stainlein ex-Paganini Stradivarius violoncello of 1707. The imagined fate of that instrument, upon her father’s death, inspired The Silver Swan, her first novel.

Despite spending much of her life in the company of authors, Delbanco came late to writing. This has given her perspective on beginning to write at this stage of life. The story of her conception of The Silver Swan and seeing it through rounds of edits, publication, and finding critical acclaim inspired many attendees of the 2016 Kauai Writers Conference. We are pleased to have her back.

Jim Abell is a comedy writer of some of the most popular television ever written. As a staff writer for two seasons of LAUGH-IN, Jim made people crack up not only all over America, but on Canadian, English, Australian, German and Japanese TV. Paramount / ABC ’sLOVE, AMERICAN STYLE hired Jim and CHET DOWLING to write the blackouts that fit betweenthe stories.

Jim was hired to write the pilot for BLACK OMNIBUS hosted by JAMES EARL JONES, and insisted the series needed a Black writer tofor the variety series, and hired LEROY ROBINSON to write with him. The pilot sold and Robinson continued on as the series head writer. In all, Jim has written over a hundred hours of PRIMETIME SPECIALS, PILOTS and SERIES for NBC, ABC and CBS.

JIM ABELL has been nominated for AN EMMY AWARD for writing LAUGH-IN, which received the EMMY AWARD for BEST COMEDY, MUSIC OR VARIETY SERIES. Jim has also received the WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA “101 BEST TELEVISION SHOWS EVER WRITTEN” AWARD in 2016.

Jim looks forward to helping writers create a comedic element to their projects, when appropriate.

JIM ABELL WRITER CREDITS & AWARDS

STAFF WRITER ROWAN AND MARTIN’S LAUGH-IN (NBC ’69-’71)
WRITER w/ Chet Dowling
LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE Blackouts (ABC ’70-’71)

WRITER w/ Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, Chet Dowling
Comedy Album “EDITH ANN, AND THAT’S THE TRUTH” (’75)

WRITER w/ Valerie Harper, Paul Keyes
NBC Pilot RAP UP featuring John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Valerie Harper, Jonathan Winters, Penny Marshall

WRITER w/ Chet Dowling
Paramount Television POLLY BERGEN’S AMERICAN WOMAN featuring Polly Bergen, Paul Newman, Victoria Principal (’74)

WRITER w/ Leroy Robinson
BLACK OMNIBUS Comedy/ Music/ Variety
Series Pilot, Starring James Earl Jones, various artists
Syndication (’74)

WRITER w /Chet Dowling
ABC Late Night Special
PLAYBOYS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Featuring Bill Cosby, Hugh Hefner, Don Knotts, Barbie Benton, Steller & Meara (’74)

WRITER
DOOBIE BROTHERS TOUR THE SOUTH
On-the spot writing bits filmed by Danny Fong for band manager Bruce Cohen and Warner Brothers Records (’74)

HEAD WRITER
ABC Late Night Special GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS Featuring Monty Hall, Jack Klugman (a serious look at compulsive
gambling, ’75)

WRITER
TOUCH OF GOLD Music Special hosted by Mac Davis and Dusty Springfield. Various million-selling artists (NBC ’75)

HEAD WRITER w/Chet Dowling.
DICK CLARK AFTERNOON SPECIAL
Hosted by Dick Clark. Featuring Uri Geller, Lunar Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, polio vaccine developer Dr. Albert Sabin (’75)

WRITER w/ Alan Carr, Cass Elliott, Chet Dowling
“DON’T CALL ME MAMA ANY MORE” Nightclub Act. Recorded live at Mr. Kelley’s, Chicago. Then performed at the London Palladium. (’74)

WRITER
PHYLLIS DILLER, KITCHEN KWEEN Special. Phyllis shows her prowess in the kitchen, cooking a beautiful oven omelet while joking with longtime friend Bob Hope.(’76)

WRITER/PRODUCER
THE QUARTERBACKS ARE COMING! A half-hour drive around Kauai with Oakland Raiders’ QB Jay Schrader to promote the NFL’s Quarterback Challenge. The promo aired on Kauai, Maui and Big Island…to promote attendance at the Kauai event on DirectTV (’90)

WRITER/CO-PRODUCER
HIP HOP CHEF, featuring Melanie with guest chef Todd Rundgren, The Deep Fat Fryer Dancers, Michelle Rundgren.
Pilot for the Food Network (2004)

AWARDS & NOMINATIONS

EMMY NOMINATION: OUTSTANDING WRITING IN COMEDY (’70)

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA AWARD: BEST 101 SHOWS IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION (2006)

Richard Bausch is an acknowledged Master of the short story form. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman’s Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story, and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.

The Modern Library published The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch in March, 1996. He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund Writer’s Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. In 1995 he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Since Cassill’s passing, in 2002, he is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard is the 2013 Winner of the REA award for Short Fiction. Bausch is currently a professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

Reviews of Richard Bausch’s novel Peace

“Brilliant.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Embedded in a landscape at once bleak and beautiful, Peace, like other classic war stories, discloses in the sparest language the spiritual darkness of war.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Perfect. . . . Bausch slips you so smoothly and unnervingly into the world of these young soldiers on patrol that you won’t quite know how you got there. . . . His narrative moves like a cat on the hunt: supple and strong, without an ounce of energy wasted.”

—Seattle Times 

“A spare and haunting meditation on the confusing and contradictory choices wars inflict on those who fight them.”

—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Every single word of Richard Bausch’s beautiful, spare new novel Peace rings darkly, tragically true.”

—Richard Russo

“Richard Bausch’s Peace, set at the end of the Second World War in Italy, is a small masterpiece with the same emotional force and moral complexity as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad.”

—Colm Tóibín

“The experiences of battle fatigue and constant exposure to mortal danger are depicted with raw immediacy and terse power in this short novel from veteran Bausch. . . . [E]choes of Stephan Crane, James Jones and particularly William Styron’s The Long March. But Bausch sustains a gripping atmosphere of wintry dread, and he keeps the reader hooked with subtly accreting little surprises. . . . Bausch admirably turns a familiar story into something genuinely new.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“An abrupt and chilling act of violence opens Bauch’s 11th novel, marking the beginning of a bleak but compelling meditation on the moral dimensions of warfare.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] consummate and versatile short story writer and novelist tells one soldier’s story in a war novel distilled to its chilling essence. . . . Bausch’s tale of one act in the immense blood-dark theater of military conflict is razor-sharp, sorrowfully poetic, and steeped in the wretched absurdity of war, the dream of peace.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“Bausch is best known for his short stories, but this powerful novella demonstrates his skill at spare language and tight construction.”

—Library Journal

Anne Perry’s publishing career began with The Cater Street Hangman. Published in 1979, this was the first book in the series to feature the Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte. This is arguably the longest sustained crime series by a living writer. Murder on the Serpentine is the latest (32nd) in the series.  She has now started a series featuring their son Daniel, beginning with 21 Days (2017).

In 1990, Anne started a second series of detective novels with The Face of a Stranger. These are set about 35 years before and features the private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly. The most recent of these (24th in the series) is Dark Tide Rising.

Anne won an Edgar award in 2000 with her short story “Heroes”. The main character in the story features in an ambitious five-book series set during the First World War, which were published between 2003 and 2007. Anne is now working on more titles in the Pitt and Monk series, both of which are under option.

None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over 20 million books are in print world-wide. Her books have appeared on bestseller lists in a number of foreign countries, where she has also had excellent reviews.   Her books regularly appear in the New York Times bestseller list, and have also been bestsellers in France, Germany and Canada.  The Times selected her as one of the “100 Masters of Crime”, and in 2015 she was awarded the Premio de Honor Aragón Negro.

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield, whose poems have been called “passionate and radiant” by the New York Times Book Review and named “among the modern masters” by The Washington Post, is the author of eight poetry books, including The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award and Given Sugar, Given Salt,, finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform The World, and is editor/co-translator of four books collecting the work of world poets from the deep past.

Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Academy of American Poets; the California Book Award and Poetry Center Book Award; and best book of the year selections from The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times. A former chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and ten volumes of The Best American Poetry.

She has taught at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Bennington’s MFA Seminars, and numerous writing conferences, including Bread Loaf and the Napa Valley Writers Conference. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her ninth poetry collection, Ledger, will appear from Knopf in early 2020.

“Hirshfield has elaborated a sensuously philosophical art that imposes a pause in our fast-forward habits of mind. Her poems appear simple, and are not. Her language, in its cleanliness and transparency, poses riddles of a quietly metaphysical nature…Clause by clause, image by image, in language at once mysterious and commonplace, Hirshfield’s poems clear a space for reflection and change. They invite ethical awareness, and establish a delicate balance.”

— Rosanna Warren, poet

“She is that rare thing in contemporary American life, a true person of letters—an eloquent and exacting poet, first, but in addition the author of enduring essays and influential translations and anthologies. Now add to this a life on the hustings, bringing the good news about poetry to nearly every state of the union. Then further add her elegant ambassadorship for poetry in the greater world (think Japan, Poland, China) and you have something that satisfies the old sense of a person of letters—a writer who demonstrates in every possible way that this life matters.”

— Kaye Ryan

Mark Kurlansky is a man of varied accomplishments. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Kurlansky got his bachelor’s degree in theater from Butler University in 1970. Refusing to serve in the military, he moved to New York, where he not only produced a number of off-off Broadway productions, but also became playwright-in-residence at Brooklyn College and, in 1972, won the Earplay award for best radio play of the year.

Unhappy with New York theater’s direction, Kurlansky turned to various jobs, working as a commercial fisherman, dock worker, paralegal, cook, and pastry chef. By the mid-1970s, he was ready to return to an early interest: journalism. Once the editor of his high school newspaper, Kurlansky’s passion led him to positions as a foreign correspondent for several major publications, including the International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer, and from 1976 to 1991 Kurlansky was based everywhere from Paris and Mexico to West Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.

In addition to writing for publications, including Food & Wine, Gourmet, and Bon Appétit, Kurlanksy has written 23 books (to date), including Cod, Salt, 1968, Food of a Younger Land, and The Basque History of the World, all international best sellers. (Cod and Salt both have corresponding children’s versions). Along the way, Kurlanksy’s earned a slew of awards, demonstrating the range of his writing skills. He has been honored by the Los Angeles Times and James Beard Foundation, and was inducted into the Basque Hall of Fame (2001). He also earned a nod as Bon Appétit’s “Food Writer of the Year” (2006) and won the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonviolence and a 2011 National Parenting Publications Gold Award for his book, World Without Fish. Kurlansky has also guest-lectured and taught at many colleges and universities. His books have been translated into 25 languages, and he often illustrates them himself.

Laura Lentz is a master writing teacher, author and developmental editor. She has taught themed creative writing workshops for over a decade to artists all over the world in intimate online groups and on Kauai’s north shore.

Her workbook Story-Quest, Make your story a Hero’s Journey will be released in November 2018. Story-Quest is workbook for writers to guide them through the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey by offering sequential writing prompts and literary examples for each stage of the hero’s journey out of best selling memoirs and poetry.

Laura helps writers expand their body of work by offering challenging and thought-provoking exercises inspired by poetry, science, music and excerpts from literature. Intimate groups of experienced writers from all over the world gather in small online groups for live, engaging workshops that are announced privately through her mailing list at www.literatiacademy.com.

Laura is also co-founder of Literati Academy, a community and school to support, encourage and assist writers in all creative endeavors. Laura is known for her Sex on the Page writing workshop, Ancestors and Epigenetics and her annual Poetry Room, which teaches writers how to use poetic form in all writing.

Laura is also the founder of the bi-annual Speak, Kauai spoken word performances on Hawaii that showcase writers from all over the world to sold out audiences, live streams and standing ovations.

Joshua Mohr is the author of five novels, including Damascus, which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Fight Song and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times. His novel All This Life won the Northern California Book Award. His first book of nonfiction, a memoir called Sirens, was recently published.

To learn more about Joshua visit his website www.joshuamohr.net

Elizabeth Rosner is a bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist living in Berkeley, California. Her most recent book, SURVIVOR CAFÉ: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in The New York Times; it was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and named one of the Best Books of 2017 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her third novel, ELECTRIC CITY, was included among the Best Books of 2014 by National Public Radio. Her poetry collection, GRAVITY, was also published in 2014. THE SPEED OF LIGHT, Rosner’s acclaimed debut novel in 2001, was translated into nine languages. Short-listed for the prestigious Prix Femina, the book won several literary prizes in both the US and Europe, including the Prix France Bleu Gironde; the Great Lakes Colleges Award for New Fiction; and Hadassah Magazine’s Ribalow Prize, judged by Elie Wiesel. BLUE NUDE, her second novel, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the SF Chronicle. Rosner’s essays have appeared in the NY Times Magazine, Elle, the Forward, and numerous anthologies. Her book reviews appear frequently in the SF Chronicle.

Whitney Scharer 

“In incandescent prose, Whitney Scharer has created an unforgettable heroine discovering her passion, her independence, and her art—and what she must sacrifice to have them. Sweeping from the glamour of 1930s Paris through the battlefields of World War II and into the war’s long shadow, The Age of Light is a startlingly modern love story and a mesmerizing portrait of a woman’s self-transformation from muse to artist.”

 

— Celeste Ng,

New York Times bestselling author of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE and EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU

When she finished the manuscript in May, after five years and so many painstaking mornings at the computer, Whitney Scharer had modest expectations. It was her first novel, and she didn’t have an agent, let alone a publisher.

Scharer now has both, and her debut book, “The Age of Light,” is a sensation even before it’s out. The novel, a fictional account of the stormy relationship between surrealist artist Man Ray and pioneering female photographer Lee Miller, was bought for more than $1 million by Little, Brown and Co. after a bidding war involving a dozen publishers.

“I celebrated by drinking a lot of champagne — with a bunch of different people,” says Scharer, laughing as she clutches a cup of coffee in the dining room of her Arlington home.

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Linda Schreyer is an award-winning television writer. She has mentored countless writers to completion of their books, taught classes since 1995 and currently leads Slipper Camp – a popular structured online writing course, and conducted large writing workshops for organizations. Her books include, From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster, a biography of producer Mark Damon. Tears and Tequila (with Jo-Ann Lautman) is her first novel. You can find more about Linda at at her IMDB profile.

Sheila Weller is a best-selling author and award-winning magazine journalist specializing in women’s lives, social issues, cultural history, and feminist investigative.

Her latest book, “The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour – and the Triumph of Women in TV News” is a lively and detailed story of three very particular lives and a testament to the extraordinary character of women everywhere.

Her sixth book was the critically acclaimed “Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — And The Journey of a Generation.” On the New York Times Bestseller list for 8 weeks, it has sold over 170,000 copies, is featured in numerous Women’s Studies programs at major universities, and was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2008 by Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Amazon.com, and Tina Brown’s DailyBeast. 

Her previous books, including the New York Times bestseller “Raging Heart,” have included well-regarded, news-breaking nonfiction accounts of high profile crimes against women and their social and legal implications.

She is a writer for Vanity Fair, a Senior Contributing Editor for Glamour, a former Contributing Editor for New York, a reviewer for The New York Times, and has written and writes for numerous other magazines.

She has won nine major magazine awards, including six Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Awards and two Exceptional Merit in Media Awards from The National Women’s Political Caucus, and she was one of three winners, for her body of work, for Magazine Feature Writing on a Variety of Subjects in the 2005 National Headliners Award.

Dana Newman is an LA-based independent literary agent representing authors of practical and narrative non-fiction in the areas of memoir, biography, business, popular culture, current affairs, lifestyle and wellness (health, mind/body/spirit and sports/fitness), and on the fiction side she focuses on literary fiction and women’s upmarket fiction. She’s always on the lookout for compelling voices, ideas and stories, and is a passionate believer in the power of books to connect and transform us.

Dana is also an attorney, focusing on publishing law and contracts. She’s a member of the California State Bar and the Association of Authors’ Representatives, and holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, and a J.D. from the University of San Francisco. Before founding her literary agency she worked as in-house counsel in the entertainment industry.

More information about her agency is available at dananewman.com.

Elizabeth Kracht joined Kimberley Cameron & Associates in the fall of 2010 to broaden her perspective on the publishing industry. She represents both literary and commercial fiction as well as nonfiction, and brings to the agency experience as a former acquisitions editor, freelance publicist and writer.

Elizabeth’s career in publishing took root in Puerto Rico where she completed her BA in English and worked as a copyeditor for an English-language newspaper. When she returned to the mainland she found her “vein of gold” in book publishing. She thrives on working closely with authors to build their careers.

Elizabeth’s eclectic life experience drives her interests. She appreciates writing that has depth, an introspective voice, and is thematically layered. Having lived in cities such as New York, San Francisco and San Juan, Puerto Rico, she is compelled by multicultural themes and characters and is drawn toward strong settings.

In fiction, she represents literary, commercial, women’s, thrillers, mysteries, historical, and crossover YA. In nonfiction, she is interested in high concept, health, science, environment, prescriptive, investigative, true crime, voice- or adventure-driven memoir, sexuality, spirituality, and animal/pet stories.

Learn more at elizabethkracht.com and kimberleycameron.com

Roger Jellinek started his publishing career at Random House, and went on to be deputy editor of the New York Times Book Review; editor in chief of Times Books; a science newsletter editor with Columbia University; a map publisher in Honolulu; editorial director of a metaphysical publishing house on Maui; and since 2006 Executive Director of the annual Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival. With his wife Eden Lee Murray he founded Jellinek & Murray Literary Agency in Honolulu in 1995, and in addition to taking on occasional editorial projects he represents an eclectic list of literary fiction, and general nonfiction.

Alia Hanna Habib is an agent at the Gernert Company, a literary agency with a client list as broad as the market, with writers ranging from John Grisham to Alice McDermott. Alia began her publishing career as a book publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and her years of in-house publicity experience strongly inform how she works with her clients. She represents narrative nonfiction, memoir and literary fiction and has a particular interest in books on pressing social and political issues.

Among her authors are Nikole Hannah-Jones (the New York Times Magazine writer and recent recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Award), Doree Shafrir (author of STARTUP), and John Donvan and Caren Zucker (authors of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize nominee IN A DIFFERENT KEY: THE STORY OF AUTISM.)

An active and engaged member of the publishing community, she serves on the Creative Council of Aspen Words and the board of Housing Works Bookstore/Cafe. Alia graduated from Barnard College and has a graduate degree in the nineteenth-century novel.

www.thegernertco.com

Michelle Tessler has worked in the publishing industry for over twenty years. Before forming her boutique agency in 2004, Michelle worked at the William Morris Agency and the prestigious literary agency Carlisle & Company (now Inkwell Management). She also spent seven years working in content and business development in the Internet industry, beginning in 1994 when she was hired by best-selling author James Gleick to help launch The Pipeline. In light of the digital opportunities that are transforming publishing, Michelle’s experience in the Internet world is of great benefit to her authors, both as they navigate ebook opportunities, and as they look for creative and effective ways to market their books to niche communities that can be targeted online. 

She represents a select number of best-selling and emerging authors in both fiction and non-fiction. Clients include accomplished journalists, scientists, academics, experts in their field, as well as novelists and debut authors with unique voices and stories to tell.  She values fresh, original writing that has a compelling point of view. She represents, among many others, Paul Collins, Frans de Waal,  Mira Jacob, Amy Stewart and Amanda Eyre Ward.

Learn more at  www.tessleragency.com

Susan Golomb is a senior agent at Writers House, representing writers of fiction and non-fiction, for both adult and juvenile books as well as illustrators. She works with literary and commercial fiction, women’s fiction, science fiction/fantasy, narrative non-fiction, history, memoirs, biographies, psychology, science, parenting, cookbooks, how-to, self-help, business, finance, young adult and juvenile fiction/non-fiction and picture books. In addition to referrals, she still takes on new clients from among the twenty to thirty unsolicited submissions that she receives daily.

Golomb graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a theatrical production coordinator and story editor before starting her literary agency in 1988. Her clients include Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Viking, 2006), Tom Rachman (The Imperfectionists – Dial Press, 2010), Gwyn Hyman Rubio, author of Icy Sparks (Viking, 1998), and she discovered Jonathan Franzen’s first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City (FSG, 1988). She also represents Yvon Chouinard, Harry Dent, Joshua Max Feldman, Glen David Gold, Rachel Kushner, Krys Lee, and William T. Vollmann, among many others. 

Stephanie Cabot is a literary agent with the Gernert Company, one of the true powerhouse agencies in New York. Gernert represents John Grisham among many others. Stephanie is the agent for Priya Parmar, a member of our 2016 faculty, author of the highly-acclaimed Vanessa and Her Sister.  Half French, half American, Stephanie was educated in Europe and in the US where she majored in history at Harvard. Her agenting career began in London and she spent nine years at William Morris – London, the last five as Managing Director, where she built a list of international, bestselling and prize-winning authors. She moved back to the States in 2005 with her husband and four children, joined The Gernert Company, and is now selectively adding writers from a variety of genres, including crime/thrillers, commercial and literary fiction, latte lit, and non-fiction. She is especially interested in writers who tell original stories with strong narratives and distinctive characters. She divides her time between New York and New England.

www.thegernertco.com

Regina Brooks  is the founder and president of Serendipity Literary Agency LLC in New York, New York. Her agency is the largest African American owned agency in the country and has represented and established a diverse base of award-winning clients in adult and young adult fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Her authors have appeared in USA TODAY, NY TIMES, and the Washington Post, as well as on Oprah, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSBNC, TV ONE, BET, and a host of others. In 2015, Publishers Weekly nominated Regina Brooks as a PW Star Watch Finalist, and she was honored with a Stevie Award in Business. Writer’s Digest magazine named Serendipity Literary Agency as one of the top 25 literary agencies. Formerly, she held senior editorial positions at John Wiley and Sons (where she was not only the youngest but also the first African-American editor in their college division) and McGraw-Hill.

Prior to her publishing career, she worked as an aerospace engineer and made history as the first African American woman to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from The Ohio State University. She is a graduate of The School of the Arts High School in Rochester, NY.

She is the author of Essence Magazine’s quick pick children’s book, NEVER FINISHED NEVER DONE (Scholastic), WRITING GREAT BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS 2e (Sourcebooks), and YOU SHOULD REALLY WRITE A BOOK: HOW TO WRITE, SELL AND MARKET YOUR MEMOIR (St. Martin’s Press), and a well received blogger for the Huffington Post. Brooks is also on the faculty of the Harvard University publishing program the Whidbey Island Writers MFA, Western Connecticut MFA low residency programs, Writer’s Digest University and teaches annually at more than twenty worldwide conferences. She has been highlighted in several national and international magazines and periodicals, including Publishers Weekly, Forbes, Media Bistro, Writers and Poets, Essence Magazine, Ebony, Jet, Women on Writing, Writer’s Digest Magazine, The Writer, The Network Journal, and Rolling Out.

She was named Woman of the Year by The National Association of Professional Women, A New York Urban League Rising Star Award winner, and a finalist for the StevieTM Award for Women Entrepreneurs. Regina Brooks is featured in books such as The Guide to Literary Agents and the NAACP nominated Down to Business: The First 10 Steps for Women Entrepreneurs, How to Build a Platform, and Bill Duke’s Dark Girls. She is also listed in International Who’s Who under the categories of Professional Management, Technology, Entrepreneurs, and Engineering.

In November 2010, Brooks partnered with Marie Brown, of Marie Brown and Associates, and Marva Allen of Hue Man Bookstore to launch a new publishing imprint with Johnny Temple’s Akashic Books called Open Lens.

Further, Possibiliteas is the brainchild of literary agent and tea enthusiast, Regina Brooks, who believed that tea—the world’s oldest performance-enhancing beverage—could have a beneficial effect on her clients—writers, artists, and other creative professionals who were looking for fuel for their creative fire.

She is a pilot and cofounder of Brooklyn Aviation as well as a member of the Association of Author Representatives and New York Women in Film and Television.

Ms. Brooks is the founder and co-Executive Director of Y.B. Literary Foundation, Inc. (www.ybliterary.org), a not-for-profit organization designed to kindle a passion for literature within high school students and an appreciation for the possibilities and opportunities that reading can provide.

Ken Sherman President of Ken Sherman & Associates, a Los Angeles based literary agency. The company was established in 1989, and handles film, television, and book writers, as well as selling film and television rights for books and life-rights. We’re a Los Angeles based, full-service literary agency working with film, television and book writers (fiction and non-fiction). Several of his clients are Pulitzer Prize winners. 

An agent for more than twenty years, Ken is also a popular and accomplished speaker, having taught and lectured extensively at venues including UCLA, USC, Loyola Marymount University, both in New Orleans and Los Angeles, The Santa Barbara Writers’ conference, the American Film Institute, The San Francisco Writers Conference, The Maui Writers Conference, The University of Oklahoma, Sherwood Oaks Experiment College, The Santa Fe Writers Conference, The Novelists, Inc. Conference in San Diego, The Aspen Institute, the Aspen Summers Words Writers Conference and The Eugene International Film Festival where he just received a lifetime achievement award.

Since graduating from the University of California-Berkeley with a major in psychology, Ken has returned numerous times to the classroom to teach his course, “The Business of Writing for Screen, Television and the Publishing Worlds,” at both USC and UCLA. He also co-taught a screenwriting class for many years at the Eugene International Film Festival.

Ken maintains strong community involvement as well, serving as an Arts and Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of West Hollywood, is a founding member of the British Academy of Film and Television/Los Angeles (BAFTA), and is a member of both the Academy of Television Arts and Science and the International Advisory Board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

www.kenshermanassociates.com

Carrie Feron’s  first job was at Pageant books, and there they “tested” a lot of books that others wouldn’t publish. Books set in Africa; books set in Roman Britain; books that were out of genre. Some of those books were cancelled when Pageant ended, so they never came out. But they lived on in her heart. She then worked for Loveswept with authors such as Janet Evanovich and Billie Green; then to Berkley where she worked with Laura Kinsale, Nora Roberts and Suzanne Forster. Now she’s Executive Editor & SVP at HarperCollins Publishers.

Ms. Feron has spent her entire career editing women’s voices: from crime to psychological suspense, historical fiction to commercial fiction. Among the authors she has worked on for Morrow are New York Times bestselling authors Meg Cabot, Deborah Crombie, Dorothea Benton Frank, Faye Kellerman, Laura Lippman, Elizabeth Lowell and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. She has been at Morrow for over twenty years, where her paperback authors include Emily Arsenault, Sara Gruen, Kerry Reichs, Liza Palmer, Jane O’Connor, Lisa Kleypas, Sarah MacLean and Eloisa James.

Arielle Eckstut  is co-founder of The Book Doctors, a company dedicated to helping writers get successfully published. She is the author of nine books including She is the author of nine books including The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published and The Secret Language of Color: The Science, Nature, History, Culture and Beauty of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue & Violet.

She is also an agent-at-large at the Levine Greenberg Rostan 
Literary Agency, where for over 25 years, she has been helping hundreds of talented writers become published authors.

Lastly, Arielle co-founded LittleMissMatched, the iconic company that sells socks that don’t match in packs of three.

Lisa Sharkey, a legend in the publishing world, is a two-time Emmy Award winner and 10-time Emmy nominee. She was honored with a Peabody Award and a DuPont Award for her work at ABC covering the September 11th terror attacks.

She serves as Senior Vice President and Director of Creative Development at HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, a subsidiary of News Corp. At HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Ms. Sharkey has overseen the acquisition of numerous titles, including Here’s the Story, and The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President by Mark Halperin of ABC News and Time magazine. She served as the President of Al Roker Entertainment. She served as Senior Producer at ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “Inside Edition.” She serves as Member of Advisory Board at The First Thirty Days, Inc.

David Sterry is co-founder of The Book Doctors, a company dedicated to helping writers get successfully published. He is the author of 16 books on a wide variety of subjects, from memoir to middle grade fiction, sports to reference. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages, optioned by Hollywood, and appeared on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Before writing professionally, David was a comic and an actor. His one man show, based on his memoir, Chicken, was named the number one show in the United Kingdom for its entire run at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, Fringe by The Independent.

Learn more about David’s literary work at

davidhenrysterry.com

To learn more about his work with authors visit www.thebookdoctors.com