Nefertiti Austin is an adjunct U.S. history college instructor and former certified PS-MAPP trainer who has co-led classes for adoptive and foster parents, and she blogs about adoption at mommiejonesing.com. An author whose work has appeared in venues like the Huffington Post, MUTHA, matermea.com, and Essence.com and has been short-listed for awards, Austin was the subject of an article on race and adoption in the Atlantic. Austin lives with her children in Los Angeles. Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America publishes in September 2019.

Tom Batten is LJ’s graphic novels columnist and an LJ Reviewer of the Year in 2018. He teaches at the College of William & Mary and writes for numerous publications, including The New Yorker and the Guardian.

Kathryn Belden, VP, and Executive Editor, Scribner, focuses on the breadth of the American experience through acquisitions in literary fiction, social and cultural history, race and gender, nature and environment, and memoir and biography. Authors she has worked with include Roz Chast, Myla Goldberg, Mitchell S. Jackson, Andrew Krivak, Kiese Laymon, Lisa See, Sarah Smarsh, Jesmyn Ward, and John Edgar Wideman, and she has edited New York Times best sellers as well as winners or finalists for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Whiting Award, and other honors.

Andrea Bobotis was born and raised in South Carolina and received a PhD in English literature from the University of Virginia. Her debut novel, The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, is set in South Carolina and was a runner-up for the 2014 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Bobotis lives in Denver, where she teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt publishes in July 2019.

Adrienne Brodeur cofounded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Coppola and currently serves as executive director of Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute. An award-winning author and editor, she worked as a book editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for many years. She lives in Cape Cod and New York City. Her memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me publishes October 2019.

Sarah M. Broom’s work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the Oxford American, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A native New Orleanian, she received a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Broom received a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant and has also been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She divided her time between Harlem, New York, and New Orleans. Her memoir The Yellow House, her first book, publishes in August 2019.

Kalisha Buckhanon’s first novel, Upstate, won the American Library Association’s Alex Award and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Debut Fiction. Buckhanon is also the author of the novels Solemn and Conception. An Andrew Mellon Fellow, she is a recipient of 2001 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship and the first Terry McMillan Young Author Award as well. Buckhanon has a BA and an MA in English language and literature from the University of Chicago and an MFA in creative writing from New School University in New York City. In 2018, the National Book Foundation/Art for Justice initiative chose Upstate as an inaugural Literature for Justice title. She lives in Chicago. Speaking of Summer publishes in July 2019.

Gabriel Bump’s nonfiction and fiction have appeared in Slam, the Huffington Post, Springhouse Journal, and other publications. He was awarded the 2016 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Fiction and received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally from South Shore, Chicago, he currently lives in Buffalo, NY. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, publishes in February 2020.  

Kira Jane Buxton’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, NewYorker.com, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, Huffington Post, and more. She was raised in the jungles of Asia and the deserts of the Middle East but now lives in Seattle with three cats, a dog, hummingbirds, a husband, and, significantly, two crows. Her debut novel, Hollow Kingdom, publishes in August 2019

Kelly Sue DeConnick got her start in the comic industry adapting Japanese and Korean comics into English. Five years and more than 10,000 pages of adaptation later, she transitioned to American comics with 30 Days of Night: Eben and Stella for Steve Niles and IDW, and work for Image, Boom, Oni, Humanoids, Dark Horse, DC, Vertigo, and Marvel soon followed. Today, DeConnick is best known for surprise hits like Carol Danvers’s rebranding as Captain Marvel and the Eisner-nominated mythological western, Pretty Deadly, the latter cocreated with artist Emma Ríos. DeConnick’s most recent venture, the sf kidney-punch called Bitch Planet, co-created with Valentine De Landro, launched to rave reviews in December 2014. DeConnick lives in Portland, OR, with her family. Aquaman. Vol. 1: Unspoken Water publishes in 2019.

Kim Deitch is a pioneer of underground comics who, in his publisher’s words, “remains a true cartoonists’ cartoonist, adored by his peers as much as anyone in the history of the medium.” He got his start doing comic strips for the East Village Other in 1967, and in 1969 he succeeded Vaughn Bodé as editor of Gothic Blimp Works, the Other’s underground comics tabloid. His Boulevard of Broken Dreams was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Best Graphic Novels Ever Written.” He is a winner of Eisner and Inkpot awards and lives in New York City. Reincarnation Stories publishes in October 2019.

Jaquira Díaz is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner who has won fellowships from the Kenyon Review, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, the Kenyon Review, Tin House online, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She is currently a consulting editor at the Kenyon Review and a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her memoir Ordinary Girls, a first book, publishes in October 2019.

Pamela Dorman, VP and Publisher, Pamela Dorman Books: Viking, has 40 years’ experience in the publishing industry, more than 25 years as an editor. In 2008, she founded the imprint Pamela Dorman Books, where she focuses on fiction and especially accessible, stylistically interesting debut fiction. She has acquired and edited many multi-million-copy No. 1 best sellers, including Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You, Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones's Diary.

Karine Jean-Pierre is a Haitian American activist, commentator, and political campaign organizer who currently serves as the Chief Public Affairs Officer for MoveOn. She is a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC; appears frequently on CNN, CNNi, CSPAN, PBS News Hour, ABC’s This Week, and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher; and is on the faculty of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She lives in Washington, DC. Her first book, Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America, publishes in November 2019.

Ben Lerner is a MacArthur Fellow whose first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was named a Believer Book Award winner, a New York Public Library’s Young Lions Prize and Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction finalist, and a best book by multiple publications. His second novel, 10:04, also received an NYPL’s Young Lions Prize and picked up a great deal of best-book attention. An excerpt from the novel won the Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize. Lerner is also the author of the New York Times best-selling The Hatred of Poetry and three poetry collections, including The Lichtenberg Figures, which won the Hayden Carruth Award and was an LJ Best Poetry Book. The Topeka School publishes in October 2019.

Karl Marlantes debuted with Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, a New York Times best seller that won the Center for Fiction’s 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and received multiple best-book citations. He followed with the nonfiction What It Is Like To Go To War, also a New York Times best seller. Together, the two books have sold over half a million copies across all formats. In addition, Marlantes is featured in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s ten-part, 18-hour documentary series The Vietnam War. He lives in rural Washington and draws on family history for his new novel. Deep River publishes in July 2019.

Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-born novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, was named a best book by the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications, and was also named one of the Ten Best Contemporary African Books by the Guardian. It was also a fiction runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and short-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. She lives in New York City. The Shadow King, set during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, publishes in September 2019.

Sean Murphy broke into the industry at a young age and made a name for himself in the world of indie comics before joining up with DC. In his tenure, he has worked on such titles as Batman/Scarecrow: Year One, Teen Titans, Hellblazer, Joe the Barbarian, and the miniseries American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest. Sean also wrote and illustrated the original graphic novel Off Road, as well as his popular miniseries, Punk Rock Jesus, and was the artist on the critically acclaimed Vertigo miniseries The Wake with Scott Snyder. Batman: White Knight published in October 2018.

Dina Nayeri is winner of the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize and a finalist for the Rome Prize. Her novels include A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, a Discover Great New Writers pick translated into 14 languages, and Refuge, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. “The Ungrateful Refugee” was one of the Guardian’s most-viewed long-form pieces in 2017. She lives in London. The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You publishes in September 2019.

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger’s Wife, a New York Times best seller, a winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Obreht was chosen as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 and one of The New Yorker 20 Under 40. Born in Belgrade, she has lived in the United States since age 12 and currently teaches at Hunter College in New York. Inland publishes in August 2019.

Jordan Pavlin, VP & Executive Editor, Alfred A. Knopf, has worked with numerous New York Times best-selling and award-winning authors, including Jennifer Egan, Sheryl Sandberg, Karen Russell, Nathan Englander, Sue Miller, Susan Minot, Jenny Offill, Julie Orringer, Maggie Shipstead, Ayana Mathis, Ben Marcus, Ethan Hawke, and Nancy Jo Sales.

James Poniewozik has been the chief television critic of the New York Times since 2015, having previously served as television and media critic for Time magazine and media columnist for Salon. At the New York Times, he has focused on how television reflects changes in culture and politics. He lives in Brooklyn. Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America publishes in September 2019.

Catherine Ryan Howard is the Cork, Ireland–born author of 2016’s Distress Signal, which was short-listed for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. It was also an Irish Times and USA Today best seller. She followed with Liar’s Girl, a 2019 Edgar Award nominee. With internationally best-selling authors Carmel Harrington and Hazel Gaynor, she is a founding member of The Inspiration Project, a monthly writers’ blog. Rewind publishes in September 2019.

Rion Amilcar Scott’s first book, Insurrections, won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Fiction and was chosen for the Rumpus Book Club. His work appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions lists for 2013 and 2016 and has been published in the Kenyon Review, PANK, the Rumpus, and Confrontation, among other publications. In addition, one of his essays received a Notable listing in Best American Essays 2015. A Kimbilio fellow, Scott earned an MFA from George Mason University, where he won both the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award and a Completion Fellowship. The World Doesn’t Require You: Stories publishes in August 2019.

Aarti Namdev Shahani is a technology correspondent for NPR based in Silicon Valley who has been honored with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award, and awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. She is also the youngest recipient of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship at Columbia University. Before entering journalism, she was a community organizer in New York City who wrote an influential study of immigrants inside Rikers Island. Shahani grew up in Flushing, Queens, in one of the most diverse zip codes in the country. Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares publishes in October 2019.

Tracy Sherrod is the editorial director of Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins and the oldest publisher devoted to African America fiction and nonfiction. Her most recent publications include Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon, Jenifer Lewis’s The Mother of Black Hollywood, Michael Twitty’s The Cooking Gene, Dick Gregory’s Defining Moments in Black History, and Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn. Currently, she is working on projects with Man Booker Prize winner Paul Beatty, attorney Benjamin Crump, legend Cicely Tyson, Emmy Award winner Steve Harvey, rapper Rakim, and many more.

Karin Slaughter has been published in 120 countries with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe. Her 18 include the “Grant County” and “Will Trent” books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New York Times best-selling novels Pretty Girls and The Good Daughter. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project, a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta. Her stand-alone novels Pieces of Her, The Good Daughter and Cop Town are in development for film and television. The Last Widow publishes in August 2019.

Cadwell Turnbull is the author of literary SF debut The Lesson, which was named a most anticipated 2019 SF title from the Verge, Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog, and Publishers Weekly. It has already been optioned by AMC for a TV series. A graduate of North Carolina State University’s Creative Writing MFA in Fiction, Turnbull also has an English MA in Linguistics from the university, and he was winner of the 2014 NCSU Prize for Short Fiction. He lives in Somerville, MA. The Lesson publishes in June 2019.

Lauren Wein is Executive Editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where she concentrates on literary fiction from the United States and abroad, as well as memoir and narrative nonfiction. Some of her titles include Sarai Walker’s Dietland, Hala Alyan’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize–winning Salt Houses, and Rachel Kadish’s National Jewish Book Award–winning The Weight of Ink, as well as works by Amos Oz and Umberto Eco. Her recent and forthcoming titles include best-selling author Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Kate Davies’s In at the Deep End, Elinor Lipman’s Good Riddance, and Adrienne Brodeur’s Wild Game.

Dan Zitt is Senior VP of Content Production for Penguin Random House Audio and has more than 20 years of experience in the audiobook industry. Zitt has the creative catalyst for over 2,000 audio productions, collaborating with best-selling authors, notable celebrities, and award-winning narrators. Sixteen of his recordings have been nominated for Grammy Awards, with former President Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, and Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist both winning the award for Best Spoken Word Album. He is also the creator of Ahab.us, a casting website launched in 2015. He currently leads a bicoastal production team that produces more than 1,400 audiobooks a year.