Afia Atakora was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Jersey, where she now lives. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of the De Alba Fellowship. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers.

Erica Boyce is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard and the author of The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and a corgi named Finn. This is her debut novel.

Jeanine Cummins is the author of three books: the novels The Outside Boy and The Crooked Branch, and the bestselling memoir A Rip in Heaven. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

Anne Emery is a lawyer and the author of the Collins-Burke mystery series, set variously in Halifax, Cape Breton, Ireland, London and New York. She has won two Arthur Ellis Awards, an Independent Publisher Book Awards silver medal, and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.

Gish Jen is the author of four previous novels, a story collection, and two works of nonfiction, the latest of which was The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She teaches from time to time in China, and otherwise lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

gishjen.com

Mimi Lemay is a graduate of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. As an advocate for transgender rights, Mimi has published op-eds in the Boston Globe and appeared on TV and radio.

Kerri Maher is the author of The Kennedy Debutante, which People magazine described as “a riveting reimagining of a true tale of forbidden love,” and This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World under the name Kerri Majors. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and founded YARN, an award-winning literary journal of short-form YA writing. A writing professor for many years, she now writes full time and lives with her daughter and dog in a leafy suburb west of Boston, Massachusetts.

Anne Gardiner Perkins is an award-winning historian and expert in higher education. She graduated from Yale University, where she won the Porter Prize in history and was elected the first woman editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. Perkins is a Rhodes Scholar who received her PhD in higher education from the University of Massachusetts Boston and her master’s in public administration from Harvard, where she won the Littauer Award for academic excellence and served as a teaching fellow in education policy. She has presented papers on the history of higher education at leading academic conferences and been a visiting scholar at the New England Resource Center for Higher Education. Perkins lives with her husband in Boston.

Leah Plunkett lives with her husband, kids, and dog in the micropolis of Concord, New Hampshire. She is an everyday runner, an around-the-clock Earl Grey tea drinker, and an enthusiastic but mediocre vegetable gardener. Leah attended Harvard College & Harvard Law School and became a lawyer so she could work with kids, parents, and communities on law and the ordinary.

Ainissa G. Ramirez, Ph.D. is a science evangelist who is passionate about getting the general public excited about science.  She co-authored Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game (Random House); and, authored Save Our Science: How to Inspire a New Generation of Scientists (TED Books).

Jennifer Rosner is the author of the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard. Her children's book, The Mitten String, is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifer's writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, The Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with
her family.

Bob Schron is an Associated Press sportswriter with decades of experience and solid links to the national sports media and NBA and NFL players and coaches. He is the coauthor of M.L. Carr's autobiography, Don't Be Denied, The Bird Era, and Tom Brady: Sudden Glory. He is also recipient of the President's award for sportswriting from the Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Association.

Bob lives in Massachusetts.

Peter Swanson is the author of five novels, including The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and his most recent, Before She Knew Him. His books have been translated into thirty languages, and his stories, poetry, and features have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. He lives outside of Boston, where he is at work on his next novel.

Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is a biography of Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, U.S. senator, and presidential candidate. Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon explores RFK’s extraordinary transformation from cold warrior to fiery leftist. Tye’s first book, The Father of Spin, is a biography of public relations pioneer Edward L.Bernays.

Robert Tougias was born and raised in a small suburban town outside of Springfield, Massachusetts, where he became fascinated with his natural surroundings at a very young age. He spent countless hours exploring vacant lots, woodland streams, and hidden ponds. His parents encouraged his interest in nature. He began watching birds by second grade and was given his first field guide and bird feeder a year later.

Ran Walker is the author of seventeen books. His short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and
poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and
educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi.

Muhammad H. Zaman is Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering. His columns have appeared in newspapers in more than 20 countries, as well as the Huffington Post, and writes a weekly column for the leading Pakistan daily Express Tribune, which is part of the International New York Times group. He lives in Sharon, MA, near Boston.

Laura Zigman is the author of Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Piece of Work, and Her. She has been a contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post, produced a popular online series of animated videos called Annoying Conversations, and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, son, and deeply human Sheltie.