Join us October 24 for our Library Journal Day of Dialog virtual event! Spanning a variety of genres, this free, day-long program will offer an in-depth look at the biggest forthcoming books for summer/fall 2024. You’ll hear directly from top authors as they discuss their new titles, inspiration, process, and more.
And don’t forget the virtual exhibit hall! Visit the booths to download free resources and chat with publishing representatives.
EVENT HOURS: 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM ET
While the event is hosted by ON24, all live sessions will be on Zoom. Make sure to log in to your work or personal Zoom account before the day starts to avoid having to log in for each session.
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CE certificates are available in the event environment for all keynotes and panels, whether you view them live or on-demand. Certificates are not provided for sponsored content.
If you are unable to join us on the live day, know that all sessions will be available for on-demand viewing within 24 hours, and the entire event will be accessible for three months from the event date.
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If you have any questions, contact the Event Manager.
9:00 – 9:30 AM ET | The Exhibit Hall Opens / Visit the Booths
In-Booth Chat
9:00 – 9:30 AM ET | Baker Publishing Group Fiction
Join bestselling and award-winning authors Tessa Afshar (The Queen’s Cook) and Mesu Andrews (Brave) as they discuss their writing process and the inspiration behind their books. These seasoned authors will transport readers to ancient times to examine the lives of a cook in Queen Esther’s court and Ahinoam, who has fallen in love with David, the future King of Israel.
9:00 – 9:30 AM ET | HarperCollins
Grab some breakfast and join the Library Love Fest team for a morning of banter and books! From fantasy to nonfiction, we’ll be buzzing about all sorts of books. Be sure to tune in!
9:30 – 10:00 AM ET | Opening Keynote Conversation
Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Alex, Reading List, and Locus Award winner Stephen Graham Jones is the author of I Was a Teenage Slasher and the LJ Best Book Don’t Fear the Reaper, along with dozens of other titles and the forthcoming The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Saga Press: Simon & Schuster). He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Moderator: Becky Spratford, LJ Horror Review Columnist
THREE CONCURRENT PANELS
10:05 – 10:55 AM ET | Literary Fiction
From epic tales to family connections, these literary fiction authors explore a wide landscape.
Isabel Allende, My Name Is Emilia del Valle (Ballantine Books: Penguin Random House)
Karissa Chen, Homeseeking (G.P. Putnam's Sons: Penguin Random House)
Allegra Goodman, Isola (The Dial Press: Penguin Random House)
Colum McCann, Twist (Random House: Penguin Random House)
Graham Norton, Frankie (HarperVia: HarperCollins)
Moderator: Lillian Dabney, The Seattle Athenaeum (WA)
10:05 – 10:55 AM ET | Romantic Comedies
These charming romantic comedies are perfect for chasing the blues away.
Alex Aster, Summer in the City (William Morrow: HarperCollins)
Melissa Ferguson, The Perfect Rom Com (HarperCollins Christian/Thomas Nelson Fiction)
Lauren Kung Jessen, Yin Yang Love Song (Forever: Hachette)
Debbie Johnson, Statistically Speaking (Harper Muse: HarperCollins Focus)
Moderator: Migdalia Jimenez, Adult Services Librarian, Chicago Public Library (IL)
10:05 – 10:55 AM ET | Spooky Treats
Find new horror novels to instill fear and thrills, just in time for Halloween.
Kylie Lee Baker, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng (MIRA: HTP)
Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho (Liveright: W.W. Norton)
Grady Hendrix, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (Berkley: Penguin Random House)
Yigit Turhan, Their Monstrous Hearts (MIRA: HTP)
Moderator: Janeé Jackson-Doering, Youth Services Consultant, State Library of Iowa, Des Moines (IA)
THREE CONCURRENT MINI-PANELS
11:00 – 11:30 AM ET | Deep-Dive Nonfiction
Focus on hyper-specific topics with these micro-nonfiction primers.
Greg Epstein, Tech Agnostic (The MIT Press)
Nalini Nadkarni, TreeNotes (National Geographic: Disney)
Bonnie Tsui, On Muscle (Algonquin Books: Hachette)
Moderator: Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collection Assessment Librarian, University of Central Florida
11:00 – 11:30 AM ET | Retellings
These books put a new spin on old stories, updating them for today.
Allison Epstein, Fagin the Thief (Doubleday: Penguin Random House)
Eowyn Ivey, Black Woods, Blue Sky (Random House: Penguin Random House)
Natalia Theodoridou, Sour Cherry (Tin House)
Moderator: Kristin L. Anderson, Jackson County Library Services (OR) and School Library Journal Reviewer
11:00 – 11:30 AM ET | Science Fiction
Explore extraordinary situations that stretch the bounds of the believable.
Suzan Palumbo, Countess (ECW Press)
Silvia Park, Luminous (Simon & Schuster)
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson, The Ephemera Collector (Liveright: W.W. Norton)
Moderator: Matthew Galloway, Anythink Libraries, Adult Fiction Buyer
In-Booth Chat
11:30 AM – 12:00 PM ET | Baker Publishing Group
Fiction Robin Jones Gunn (Tea with Elephants) is a bestselling author with more than 100 novels. Kit Tosello (The Color of Home) is a debut novelist. Join their conversation as they discuss a fresh approach to writing contemporary fiction.
11:30 AM – 12:00 PM ET | Break / Visit the Exhibit Hall
12:00 – 12:30 PM ET | Afternoon Keynote
Imani Perry is the author of the National Book Award–winning South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, as well as Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award. She is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Her forthcoming book is Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (Ecco: HarperCollins).
Introduced by Thomas J. Davis, PhD, JD, Professor emeritus, Arizona State University, Tempe
TWO CONCURRENT PANELS
12:35 – 1:25 PM ET | About Family: It’s All Relative
Everyone can relate to family drama. These novels give readers a chance to see how other people resolve household affairs.
Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell (Random House: Penguin Random House)
Weike Wang, Rental House (Riverhead Books: Penguin Random House)
Jennifer Weiner, The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits (William Morrow: HarperCollins)
Moderator: Jennie Mills, Library Director, Shorewood-Troy Public Library (IL)
12:35 – 1:25 PM ET | Crime Fiction
From comics-related capers to cozy British baking mysteries to remote murders, these novels have a thrill for every reader.
Alafair Burke, The Note (Knopf: Penguin Random House)
Rebecca Connolly, The Crime Brûlée Bake Off (Shadow Mountain Publishing)
Adam Oyebanji, Two Times Murder (Severn House: Canongate Books)
Alex Segura, Alter Ego (Flatiron Books: Macmillan)
Tessa Wegert, The Coldest Case (Severn House: Canongate Books)
Moderator: Allison Gray, Retired Director of Goleta and Santa Ynez Valley Libraries (CA)
TWO CONCURRENT MINI-PANELS
1:30 – 2:00 PM ET | Bibliographic Trends: Novels About Books
The only thing better than reading a book is reading a book about books. Or authors. Or librarians. Write (and read) what you know!
Allen Eskens, The Quiet Librarian (Mulholland Books: Hachette)
Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind: A Novel (Atria: Simon & Schuster)
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author (William Morrow: HarperCollins)
Moderator: Lynnanne Pearson, Information Librarian, Arlington Heights Memorial Library (IL)
1:30 – 2:00 PM ET | Funny, Charming, Feel-Good Novels
Sink into novels of second chances, harmony, healing, and compassion.
Kira Jane Buxton, Tartufo (Grand Central Publishing: Hachette)
Fran Kimmel, Cattail Lane (ECW Press)
Edward Underhill, The In-Between Bookstore (HarperCollins)
Moderator: Julie Kane, Professor and Collection Strategies Librarian, Washington and Lee University (VA)
TWO CONCURRENT PANELS
2:05 – 2:55 PM ET | Novel Histories
These works of fiction offer a front-row seat to fascinating historical events.
Erin Crosby Eckstine, Junie (Ballantine Books: Penguin Random House)
Michelle Griep, Of Gold and Shadows (Bethany House Publishers: Baker Publishing Group)
Alka Joshi, Six Days in Bombay (MIRA: HTP)
Heather B. Moore, Lady Flyer (Shadow Mountain Publishing)
Moderator: Joanna M. Burkhardt, Full Professor/Collection Development Officer, University of Rhode Island
2:05 – 2:55 PM ET | Spells, Witches, Fairies and More
If you’re looking for fantastical escapism, you’ve found the right panel. Explore magical worlds via these fantasy novels.
Cassandra Clare, The Ragpicker King (Del Rey: Penguin Random House)
Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots (Tordotcom: Macmillan)
Luis Jaramillo, The Witches of El Paso (Atria/Primero Sueno Press: Simon & Schuster)
Breanne Randall, Spells, Strings, and Forgotten Things: A Novel (Dell: Random House)
Moderator: Jessica Trotter, Collection Development Specialist, Capital Area District Libraries (MI)
2:55 – 3:25 PM ET | Break / Visit the Exhibit Hall
TWO CONCURRENT PANELS
3:25 – 4:15 PM ET | Books Good Enough to Eat
Diane Morrisey, You Got This! (Simon Element: Simon & Schuster)
Ashleigh Shanti, Our South (Union Square & Co.)
Paola Velez, Bodega Bakes (Union Square & Co.)
Laurie Woolever, Care and Feeding (Ecco: HarperCollins)
Moderator: Ron Block, Branch Manager, Cuyahoga County Public Library System (OH)
3:25 – 4:15 PM ET | Romantasy Roundup
Some of the biggest books of the moment are found in this mash-up genre with a devoted fan base.
Kristin Cast, The Empress (Bloom Books: Sourcebooks)
Penn Cole, Spark of the Everflame (Atria Books: Simon & Schuster)
Maxym M. Martineau, House of Blight (Harper Voyager: HarperCollins)
Rebecca Robinson, The Serpent and the Wolf (Saga: Simon & Schuster)
Samantha Sotto Yambao, Water Moon (Del Rey: Penguin Random House)
Moderator: Eve Stano, Collection Strategist, University of Iowa Libraries
TWO CONCURRENT MINI-PANELS
4:20 – 4:50 PM ET | Eye-Opening Debuts
Explore three works by debut authors that delve into historical China, daring heists, and a devastating walk toward the unknown.
Jesse DeRoy, Safecracker (Union Square & Co.)
Emma Pattee, Tilt (Marysue Rucci Books: Simon & Schuster)
Jane Yang, The Lotus Shoes (Park Row: HTP)
Moderator: Linsey Milillo, Assistant Branch Manager, Fairfield Lane Library (OH)
4:20 – 4:50 PM ET | Memorable Memoirs
Gain new perspective with personal stories of finding self and home.
Vicky Nguyen, Boat Baby (Simon & Schuster)
Theresa Okokon, Who I Always Was: A Memoir (Atria: Simon & Schuster)
Tara Roberts, Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging (Nat Geo: Disney)
Moderator: Michael Rodriguez, Senior Strategist, Content & Scholarly Communication Initiatives, Lyrasis
TWO CONCURRENT MINI-PANELS
4:55 – 5:25 PM ET | Current Events: Our World, Our Stories
Nonfiction that examines the world and suggests how to make it a better place.
Mariana Chilton, The Painful Truth about Hunger in America (The MIT Press)
Alice Driver, Life and Death of the American Worker (Atria/One Signal Publishers: Simon & Schuster)
Jeff Hobbs, Seeking Shelter (Scribner: Simon & Schuster)
Moderator: Natalie Marshall, Executive Director, Flint River Regional Library System (GA)
4:55 – 5:25 PM ET | Lights, Camera, Action!
Check out stories of Hollywood, past and present.
Phil Hanley, Spellbound (Henry Holt and Co.: Macmillan)
Jim O'Heir, Welcome to Pawnee (William Morrow: HarperCollins)
Mallory O'Meara, Daughter of Daring (Hanover Square Press: HTP)
Moderator: Jill Cox-Cordova, Associate Editor, Library Journal
5:30 – 6:00 PM ET | Closing Keynote
Marie Benedict is an LJ Best Book novelist beloved for her historical fiction about women. She is the author of the Barnes & Noble book club pick The Only Woman in the Room and coauthor (with Victoria Christopher Murray) of GMA book club pick The Personal Librarian and Target Book of the Year the First Ladies. Her forthcoming novel is The Queens of Crime (St. Martin’s Press: Macmillan).
Introduced by Liz French, LJ Reviews Senior Editor
KEYNOTES |
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Marie Benedict is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Mitford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in the Room, Lady Clementine, Carnegie's Maid, The Other Einstein, and with Victoria Christopher Murray, the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian and the Target Book of the Year The First Ladies. All have been translated into multiple languages, and many have been selected for the Barnes & Noble Book Club, Target Book Club, Costco Book Club, Indie Next List, and LibraryReads List. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family. |
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Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. |
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Imani Perry is the author of South to America, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Perry's other books include Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation; Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons. |
SPEAKERS |
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Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The Wind Knows My Name, Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. Her books have been translated into more than forty-two languages and have sold more than eighty million copies worldwide. Allende has received 15 honorary doctorates, the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. She is also the founder of The Isabel Allende Foundation, an organization that empowers women and girls in order to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence. |
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Alex Aster is a #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author. She studied creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, lives in New York, and is never too far from a coffee shop. |
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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. 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 master of library and information science degree from Simmons University. |
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Alafair Burke is the Edgar-nominated, New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels of suspense, including The Ex, The Wife, The Better Sister, and Find Me, and coauthor of the best-selling Under Suspicion series. A former prosecutor, she is now a professor of criminal law. She recently served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and was the first woman of color to be elected to that position. She lives in New York. |
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Kira Jane Buxton’s debut novel, Hollow Kingdom, was a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the Audie Awards, and the Washington State Book Awards, and was named a best book of 2019 by NPR, Book Riot, and Good Housekeeping. She has also written a sequel, Feral Creatures, and her forthcoming novel, Tartufo, will be published in January 2025. She spends her time with three cats, a dog, two crows, a charm of hummingbirds, five Steller’s jays, two dark-eyed juncos, two squirrels, and a husband. |
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Kristin Cast is a #1 NYT and #1 USA Today bestselling author with over 25 million books in print. She rediscovered her passion for storytelling in the stacks at dusty bookstores and in rickety chairs in old coffeehouses. For as long as she can remember, Kristin’s been telling stories. Thankfully, she’s been writing them down since 2005. |
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Karissa Chen is a Fulbright fellow, Kundiman Fiction fellow, and a VONA/Voices fellow whose fiction and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Eater, The Cut, NBC News Think!, Longreads, PEN America, Catapult, Gulf Coast, and Guernica, among others. She was awarded an artist fellowship from the NJ Council on the Arts as well as residences at Millay Colony where she was a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and Willapa Bay AiR. She was formerly the Senior Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief at Hyphen magazine. She received an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and splits her time between New Jersey and Taipei, Taiwan. |
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Mariana Chilton is Professor of Health Management and Policy at Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She founded the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, where she launched Witnesses to Hunger, a movement to increase women's participation in the national dialogue on hunger and poverty, and the Building Wealth and Health Network to promote healing and economic security. She has testified on solutions to hunger before the US Senate and US House of Representatives. |
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Cassandra Clare is the author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Shadowhunter Chronicles and the New York Times bestselling Sword Catcher. The Shadowhunter Chronicles have been adapted as both a major motion picture and a television series. Her books have more than fifty million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and four fearsome cats. |
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Penn Cole is an internationally bestselling author of magical worlds, feisty women, and angsty romance. Her debut series, The Kindred’s Curse Saga, has been sold in over a dozen languages to date. Before pursuing her lifelong dream of publishing, Penn had a prior career as an artist and attorney. Although she’s a Texas girl born and bred, she currently lives in France with her husband where she can usually be found eating far too many pastries and trolling her readers on Discord. |
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Rebecca Connolly is the author of more than two dozen novels. She calls herself a Midwest girl, having lived in Ohio and Indiana. She’s always been a bookworm, and her grandma would send her books almost every month so she would never run out. Book Fairs were her carnival, and libraries are her happy place. She received a master’s degree from West Virginia University. |
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Jesse DeRoy is a former consultant, rock-climbing instructor, and award-winning journalist. Safecracker is Jesse’s first novel. They live in New York with their family. |
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Alice Driver is a J. Anthony Lukas and James Beard Award–winning writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. Driver is the author of Life and Death of the American Worker, More or Less Dead, and the forthcoming Artists All Around, a memoir about her family’s relationship with Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are. She is also the translator of Abecedario de Juárez. She lives in the Ozark Mountains. |
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Amal El-Mohtar is a Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, poetry and criticism, and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which has been translated into over ten languages. Her reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times and on NPR Books. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. |
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Erin Crosby Eckstine is an author of speculative historical fiction, personal essays, and anything else she’s in the mood for. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Eckstine grew up between the South and Los Angeles before moving to New York City to attend Barnard College. She earned a master’s in secondary English education from Stanford University and taught high school English for six years. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cats. |
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Allison Epstein, Fagin the Thief (Doubleday: Penguin Random House) |
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Greg M. Epstein serves as Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MIT, where he advises students, faculty, and staff members on ethical and existential concerns from a humanist perspective. He was TechCrunch's first “ethicist in residence” and has been called “a symbol of the transition in how Americans relate to organized religion” (The Conversation). He is the author of the New York Times-bestselling book Good Without God and has also written for MIT Technology Review, CNN.com, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Newsweek. |
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Allen Eskens is the USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury, which has been published in twenty-six languages, and eight other novels, most recently Saving Emma, Forsaken Country, The Stolen Hours, The Shadows We Hide, and Nothing More Dangerous. His books have won the Barry Award, the Rosebud Award, the Silver Falchion Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. Eskens is a former criminal defense attorney and lives with his wife, Joely, in greater Minnesota. |
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Virginia Feito, raised in Madrid and Paris, studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London and advertising at Miami Ad School. She writes regularly for Vanity Fair Spain and is the author of the acclaimed Mrs. March and the forthcoming Victorian Psycho (Liveright, February 2025). |
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Melissa Ferguson is the bestselling author of titles including How to Plot a Payback, Meet Me in the Margins, and Famous for a Living. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and children in their growing farmhouse lifestyle and writes heartwarming romantic comedies that have been featured in such places as The Hollywood Reporter, Travel + Leisure, and The New York Post. |
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Allegra Goodman is the author of six novels, including the national bestseller Sam, which was a Read with Jenna selection; two short story collections; and a novel for young readers. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her new novel Isola is forthcoming from The Dial Press in January 2025. |
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Michelle Griep has been writing since she first discovered blank wall space and Crayolas. She is a Christy Award–winning author of historical romances that both intrigue and evoke a smile. She’s an Anglophile at heart, and you’ll most often find her partaking of a proper cream tea while scheming up her next novel . . . but it’s probably easier to find her at MichelleGriep.com or on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. |
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Phil Hanley’s comedy career began at open mics in Vancouver, Canada. It then went on to include his own Comedy Central special, “The Half Hour,” and performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. He has been showcased at every major comedy festival and clips from his improvisational crowd work often go viral, garnering hundreds of millions of views. When he’s not touring North America, he can be seen regularly at The Comedy Cellar in New York City. |
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Grady Hendrix is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter living in New York City. He is the author of Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism (now a feature film from Amazon Studios), We Sold Our Souls, and the New York Times bestsellers The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, The Final Girl Support Group, and How To Sell a Haunted House (all being adapted for film and television). Grady also authored the Bram Stoker Award–winning nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the ’70s and ’80s, and his latest nonfiction book is These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World. |
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Patti Callahan Henry is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of several novels, including Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the recipient of the Christy Award, the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year Award, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year. She is the cohost and cocreator of the popular weekly online live web show and podcast Friends and Fiction. She lives in Alabama and South Carolina with her family. |
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Jeff Hobbs is the author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was made into the 2024 film Rob Peace. He is also the author of Show Them You’re Good and Children of the State. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. |
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Eowyn Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She worked for nearly a decade as a bookseller at independent Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska, and prior to that as a reporter for the local newspaper, The Frontiersman. Her new novel Black Woods, Blue Sky is forthcoming from Random House in February 2025. |
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Stacy Nathaniel Jackson is a trans poet, playwright, and visual artist whose work has appeared in Electric Literature, Georgia Review, and New American Writing, among other publications. He currently resides in Washington, DC. |
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Luis Jaramillo is the author of The Witches of El Paso and the award-winning short story collection, The Doctor’s Wife. His writing has appeared in LitHub, BOMB Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School. He received an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and an MFA from The New School. Find out more at LuisJaramillo.com. |
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Debbie Johnson is an award-winning author who lives and works in Liverpool, England, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework. She writes feel-good emotional women's fiction and has sold more than 1 million books worldwide. She is published globally in many different languages, and her books include the best-selling Comfort Food Cafe series, Maybe One Day, The Moment I Met You and Forever Yours. Her novel Never Kiss A Man In A Christmas Sweater was made into a Hallmark movie. |
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Fran Kimmel is an award-winning author of numerous short stories, plays for both theater and radio, and the novels No Good Asking and The Shore Girl. Born and raised in Calgary, Fran now lives in Lacombe, Alberta, and can be reached at frankimmel.com. |
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Lauren Kung Jessen is a mixed-race Chinese American writer with a fondness for witty, flirtatious dialogue and making meals with too many steps but lots of flavor. She is fascinated by myths and superstitions and how ideas, beliefs, traditions, and stories evolve over time. From attending culinary school to working in the world of Big Tech to writing love stories, Lauren cares about creating experiences that make people feel something. When she’s not writing novels, she works as a content strategist and user experience writer. She also has a food and film blog, A Dash of Cinema, where she makes food inspired by movies and TV shows. She lives in Nashville with her husband (who she met thanks to fate—read: the algorithms of online dating), two cats, and dog. |
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Alka Joshi was born in the desert state of Rajasthan in India. In 1967, her family immigrated to America. She earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts in San Francisco. Prior to writing The Henna Artist, Alka ran an advertising and marketing agency for 30 years. She has spent time in France and Italy and currently lives with her husband on the Northern California Coast. |
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Maxym M. Martineau is an associate creative director by day and a fantasy author by night. When she’s not getting heated over broken hearts, she enjoys playing video games, binge-watching television shows, competing in just about any sport, and of course, reading. |
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Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of the novels Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as three critically acclaimed story collections and the nonfiction books Letters to a Young Writer and American Mother. He is the cofounder of the global non-profit organization Narrative 4, which operates in 42 countries and uses storytelling to propel community action and change. A regular contributor to The New York Times, he lives with his family in New York City. His new novel Twist is forthcoming from Random House in March 2025. |
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Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of more than seventy publications, including The Paper Daughters of Chinatown and Under the Java Moon. She’s lived on both the east and west coasts of the United States, including Hawaii, and attended school abroad including the Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. She loves to learn about anything in history and, as an author, is passionate about historical research. |
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Diane Morrisey was, for many years, a store team leader and executive at Whole Foods where she oversaw the prepared foods business as well as overall operations for stores in New York and Connecticut. She is now a full-time content creator on Instagram. She has been featured in Taste of Home Magazine, Domino, Esquire, Kitchn, Food52, The Connecticut Post, and appeared on Good Morning America, Food Network, and CNN, among others. |
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Nalini Nadkarni is an ecologist, avid science communicator, and, as a National Geographic Explorer at Large, an ambassador who represents science and nature awareness throughout the world. She has pioneered novel access techniques to study the plants, animals, and microbes that live in the tropical and temperate rainforest treetops in Costa Rica and Washington State, galvanizing biologists to study what has been called the “last biotic frontier.” A professor at the University of Utah, she has published more than 150 journal articles, three books, and is the subject of the PBS documentary “From Earth to Sky.” TreeNotes is inspired by her podcast, which is broadcast weekly by Utah’s public radio station, KUER. She divides her time between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Monteverde, Costa Rica. |
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Vicky Nguyen is an NBC News senior consumer investigative correspondent and anchor of NBC News Daily. She reports for the Today show, Nightly News with Lester Holt and NBC News Now. She graduated as valedictorian from the University of San Francisco. Vicky lives in New York with her husband and three daughters. Her parents are always nearby. |
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Graham Norton is the award-winning host of The Graham Norton Show, one of the most popular programs on BBC America. He has authored several novels, including Holding, A Keeper, Home Stretch, and Forever Home, as well as the bestselling memoirs So Me and The Life and Loves of a He Devil. He resides in London. |
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Jim O’Heir is an Emmy Award–winning actor, best known for his role as Jerry Gergich on Parks and Recreation. Throughout his career, Jim has starred in countless movies and TV shows, including Curb Your Enthusiasm, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parenthood, and Better Call Saul. He now also co-hosts the hit podcast Parks and Recollection with Greg Levine. |
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Theresa Okokon is an award-winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Elle, midnight & indigo, Hippocampus Magazine, and much more. Her first book is the essay collection Who I Always Was. |
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Nnedi Okorafor is the author of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestselling series including Binti and Who Fears Death, currently in development at HBO with George R.R. Martin. She has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner, and multiple Hugo awards, as well as general honors such as the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Born in Cincinnati to Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents, she now resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her daughter Anyaugo. |
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Mallory O'Meara is the award winning and bestselling historian and writer of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, Girly Drinks, which won a 2022 James Beard Award, and Girls Make Movies, which is a 2023 Junior Library Guild Selection. Every week, she co-hosts the literary podcast Reading Glasses. She lives in the mountains near Los Angeles with her two cats. |
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Adam Oyebanji was born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire in Scotland. He has lived in Birmingham, London, Lagos, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York. A graduate of Birmingham University and Harvard Law School, Adam works in the field of counter-terrorist financing, helping banks choke off the money supply to rogue states, narcotics empires, and human trafficking networks. He now lives in Edinburgh. |
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Suzan Palumbo is a Trinidadian-Canadian dark speculative fiction writer and editor. Her short stories have been nominated for the Nebula, Aurora, and World Fantasy Awards. Her debut dark fantasy/horror short story collection, Skin Thief: Stories, is out now from Neon Hemlock. She lives in Brampton, ON. |
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Silvia Park’s stories have been published in Black Warrior Review, Tor, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from NYU and attended the Clarion Science and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and Tin House Summer Workshop. They teach fiction at the University of Kansas and split their selves between Lawrence and Seoul. Luminous is their first novel. |
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Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She lives in Oregon. |
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Breanne Randall is the New York Times bestselling author of The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic. She lives in the sleepy foothills of Northern California with her husband, her two daughters, and a slew of farm animals. When she's not writing, you can find her wandering the property searching for fairy portals or serving elaborate stuffed animal tea parties. |
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Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who documents shipwrecks that once carried captive Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. Their stories—and the stories of the divers, historians, archaeologists, and communities she meets along the way—became the podcast series Into the Depths, which has been featured in more than 200 media outlets. In 2022, Roberts became the first Black female explorer to grace the cover of National Geographic magazine and was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. |
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By day, Rebecca Robinson works as an administrator at her alumni high school. By night, she’s an avid reader, writer, and consumer of all things art. When she’s not writing, Rebecca loves to cook, spend time with her husband and son, and go hiking with her two huskies. |
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Alex Segura is the bestselling and award-winning author of Secret Identity, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller and a New York Times Editor’s Choice and an NPR Best Mystery of the Year. He's also the author of the Pete Fernandez series, as well as the Star Wars novel, Poe Dameron: Free Fall, and a Spider-Verse adventure called Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow. He lives in New York City with his family. |
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Ashleigh Shanti has been working in restaurants since she was a teenager. She graduated from culinary school at Baltimore International College in 2013 and went on to stage at Minibar in Washington, D.C., and act as culinary assistant for Vivian Howard before becoming chef de cuisine at John Fleer’s Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina. Today, she is the chef-owner of Good Hot Fish in the same city. She was named an Eater Young Gun in 2019 and was a finalist for the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year award in 2020. She also competed in season 19 of Bravo’s Top Chef. Raised from Virginia Beach, Virginia, she now lives in Asheville with her wife, Meaghan, and their dog, Roux. |
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Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels including Rodham, Eligible, Prep, American Wife, and Sisterland, as well as the collection You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her novels have been translated into thirty languages. In addition, her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, for which she has also been the guest editor. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair, and on public radio’s This American Life. Her second short story collection, Show Don’t Tell, is forthcoming in February 2025 from Random House. |
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Natalia Theodoridou is a queer and transmasculine writer whose stories have appeared in venues such as Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, and Strange Horizons, and have been translated into Italian, French, Greek, Estonian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. He won the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction and the 2022 Emerging Writer Award by Moniack Mhor & The Bridge Awards, and has been a finalist for the Nebula award multiple times. He holds a PhD in media and cultural studies from SOAS, University of London. Born in Greece, with roots in Georgia, Russia, and Turkey, he currently lives in the UK. |
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Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and the bestselling author of Why We Swim, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Time magazine and NPR Best Book of the Year; it is currently being translated into ten languages. Bonnie is also the author of American Chinatown, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and Sarah and the Big Wave, a children’s book about the first woman to surf Mavericks and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. Her work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National Press Foundation, the Mesa Refuge, and the Best American Essays series. She lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area. |
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Yigit Turhan was born in Ankara, Turkey. A lifelong reader, he owes his love of horror to his grandmother and the films she shared with him. He has previously published a horror novel in Turkish. He lives in Milan, Italy, where he holds a C-suite role at a renowned fashion house. This is his English-language debut. |
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Edward Underhill grew up in the suburbs of Wisconsin, where he could not walk to anything, so he had to make up his own adventures. He studied music in college, spent several years living in very small apartments in New York, and currently resides in California with his partner and a talkative black cat. He is the author of two young adult novels, Always the Almost and This Day Changes Everything. The In-Between Bookstore is his first novel for adults. |
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Paola Velez is a James Beard Award-nominated pastry chef who was raised in New York City and the Dominican Republic. She is the cofounder of Bakers Against Racism, is the founder of the pop-up dining series Doña Dona and Dōekï Dōekï, and is the former executive pastry chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Maydan in Washington, DC. She was named Food & Wine’s best new chef and Cherry Bombe’s “Person of the Year” in 2021, and currently serves as a culinary diplomat for the United States. She lives in Washington, DC. |
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Weike Wang is the author of the novels Chemistry and Joan is Okay. She is the recipient of aPEN/Hemingway Award, a Whiting award, and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 award.Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Best American Short Stories,among other publications. She lives in New York City and teaches at the University ofPennsylvania, Columbia University and Barnard College. |
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Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries. A former freelance journalist, Tessa has contributed to such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, The Economist and The Globe and Mail. Tessa grew up in Québec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she studies martial arts. |
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Jennifer Weiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nineteen novels, including Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, Mrs. Everything, and The Breakaway. She lives with her family in Philadelphia. |
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Laurie Woolever is a writer and editor. She spent nearly a decade assisting Anthony Bourdain, with whom she coauthored the cookbook Appetites and World Travel. She’s written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others, and has worked as an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography. |
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Samantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveler, and speculative fiction writer based in Manila, the Philippines. She is the author of Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, and The Beginning of Always. Water Moon is her fifth novel. |
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Jane Yang was born in the Chinese enclave of Saigon and raised in Australia where she grew up on a diet of superstition and family stories from Old China. Despite establishing a scientific career, first as a pharmacist and later in clinical research, she is still sometimes torn between modern, rational thinking and the pull of old beliefs in tales that have been passed down the family. Jane’s family tales are an inspiration for her writing. She writes stories about women in pre-Communist China, exploring power and class struggles, and sometimes with a dash of suspense, spirits and hauntings. |
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MODERATORS |
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Kristin Anderson manages the Bear Creek Area and the Ashland Branch of Jackson County Library Services in Southern Oregon. Prior to her time in Oregon, she spent thirteen years working in youth services roles in Central Ohio libraries. She is passionate about the importance of diverse representation in literature for young readers. She has been an SLJ reviewer for nearly 15 years. She holds both an MLIS from Kent State University and an MBA from University of Texas at Austin. |
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Ron Block is a Branch Manager in the Cuyahoga County Public Library System in Cleveland, Ohio. His passion for libraries, reading and cooking have fueled non-traditional library programs and community collaborations. He was named a 2020 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and serves as a judge for the James Beard Cookbook Awards. Ron has recently become the Podcast Host for https://friendsandfiction.com/, representing 4 NYT Bestselling authors. |
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Joanna Burkhardt is the author/co-author of four books and numerous scholarly articles, concentrating on Information Literacy and Media Literacy. She is a co-creator of one of the first for-credit Information Literacy courses in the United States. She is a long-time teacher of college students and library professionals. She has been a book reviewer since 1986. She is an avid reader. |
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Jill Cox-Cordova is a nonfiction associate editor for Library Journal. She holds an MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, and a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University. She worked as a journalist for 21 years at such media outlets as CNN.com, The Weather Channel, MSNBC, and WSB-TV. She also freelanced for Essence magazine. As a creative writer, she has had flash fiction published in an anthology and creative nonfiction in Parks and Points, where she placed second in the publication’s essay contest. |
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Lillian Dabney, The Seattle Athenaeum (WA). |
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A historian and lawyer, Thomas J. Davis is professor emeritus at Arizona State University, Tempe, where he taught US Constitutional and legal history. He earned his PhD from Columbia University in the City of New York and his JD from the University of Buffalo School of Law. He is author of Plessy v. Ferguson: A Landmark in the American Mosaic, History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots, and Race Relations in America, among his more than 50 books and articles. |
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Sara Duff is the Acquisitions & Collection Assessment Librarian at the University of Central Florida where she coordinates all monograph & video acquisitions. She is the current vice chair of ALA RUSA CODES and has served on CODES book awards committees for the past 8 years, including chairing the Notable Books Council. She can often be found watching tennis, drinking too much coffee, or attempting to organize her bookshelves. |
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Matthew Galloway has worked in libraries since 2011, leaving archaeology behind—aside from late night reading and an inability to stop noticing artifacts while hiking. He started work in collection development at Anythink Libraries in 2018, where he puts his addiction to book award committees and book reviewing to good use making sure his county gets the most engaging adult fiction possible. Outside of work, he dabbles in photography, travel, and figuring out how to organize an increasingly unwieldy board game collection. |
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The daughter of a library director, Allison Gray began her career as a children's librarian. After serving on many award committees such as Caldecott and Newbery, she transitioned to becoming a public library director in New York and California. She currently serves on the Sophie Brody Award Committee. Allison's 35+ years in libraries have fed her avid reading habits. |
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Janeé Jackson-Doering is the Youth Services Consultant for the State Library of Iowa. She has worked as a librarian in small and large public libraries in Iowa for over 10 ½ years. Janeé also is the host of Check It Out, an online book talking platform for public librarians in Iowa. When she’s not working on youth-related projects, she loves to read all kinds of Horror Fiction and has loved the Horror genre since childhood. Janeé lives in Des Moines, Iowa with her husband and their furry cat, Aslan. |
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Migdalia Jimenez is a librarian at the Chicago Public Library. She was named Reviewer of the Year by Library Journal in 2022 and is a LibraryReads Board Member. She has moderated author panels in conjunction with Library Journal and a Crash Course Webinar for Novelist. Her favorite genres to read are Romance, Science Fiction, and Non-Fiction—especially Popular Science and essay collections. She’s also a fan of re-tellings and books featuring diversity of all kinds. When she’s not reading, she loves traveling, cooking, riding her bike and playing with her 4 cats. |
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Julie Kane’s librarianship has been primarily academic and influenced by her lifelong love of reading. Her BA is from Mount Holyoke, MS LIS from Simmons, MA in English from Lynchburg, and perspective from growing up in Vermont and moving on to life and jobs in New England, California, and Virginia. She has served on the ALA Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award panel and was a 2023 LJ Reviewer of the Year. Findable on Instagram at @kanedomain, she’s madly in love with reading, learning to knit and following the adventures of her Plott hound, Hobbes. |
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Natalie Marshall is the Executive Director of the Flint River Regional Library System in central Georgia. She has a B.A. from Agnes Scott College in Economics and History, and an M.L.I.S. degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She joined FRRLS in 2005 as a Public Services Librarian with a focus on Collection Development and has been executive director since 2015. She currently reviews for Library Journal and Audiofile Magazine. |
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Linsey Milillo is the Assistant Branch Manager of the Fairfield Lane Library. She has a B.A from Wright State University, two Masters from Miami University and a Masters in Library Science from Kent State University. She has worked at Lane for more than 15 years serving the community and developing programming for all ages. Linsey enjoys reading as a pastime and believes supporting literacy for education and entertainment is an important element of her career. |
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Jennie Mills has been a librarian for 25 years and a library director in Illinois for twenty. She's taught reference, reader's advisory, and collection development at the community college level. She's been a reviewer for Library Journal for ten years, primarily for women's literature, with the occasional horror and science-fiction book thrown in. Mills serves on the Board of the Illinois Library Association and the Illinois Intellectual Freedom Committee. |
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Lynnanne Pearson is an Information Librarian at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. She has presented at several library conferences on readers advisory, genres, book discussions and eBooks, among other topics. She has also served on statewide committees as well as the Library Journal Best of Popular fiction subcommittee. She currently writes book reviews for both Library Journal and Booklist and was named one of 2020 Library Journal Reviewers of the Year. |
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Michael Rodriguez (he/him) is a senior strategist at Lyrasis, a community-supported nonprofit whose mission is to support enduring access to our shared academic, scientific, and cultural heritage. Michael has worked in public and academic libraries and consortia for more than 10 years and recently served as president of the New England Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). |
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Becky Spratford [MLIS] is a Readers' Advisor in Illinois specializing in serving patrons ages 13 and up and an LJ Horror Review Columnist. She runs the critically acclaimed RA training blog RA for All. She provides content for EBSCO’s NoveList database and writes reviews for Booklist and a horror review column for Library Journal. Becky is a 20- year locally elected Library Trustee and a Board member for the Reaching Across Illinois Library System. Known for her work with horror readers, Becky is the author of The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021]. You can follow Becky on Twitter @RAforAll. |
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Eve Stano is the Collection Strategist for the University of Iowa Libraries, performing collection assessment and data analysis. Formerly, she was the Collection Development and Electronic Resources Librarian at Ball State University, selecting nonfiction academic materials for various departments as well as the bestseller collection of popular fiction and nonfiction titles. She has been a book reviewer for Library Journal since November 2014. |
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Jessica Trotter is an archivist by training but now works as a Collection Development Specialist for Capital Area District Libraries in Lansing, Michigan, Digital Selector for the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services OverDrive Consortium, serves on the Board for LibraryReads, and advocates for thoughtful and inclusive Readers Advisory. |
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