Fiction Presenters

More presenters will be added in the weeks to come.
The detailed session schedule will be available in late August.

 

Fiction Presenters

 
 

David James Duncan

David James Duncan is the author of the classic novels The River Why and The Brothers K; the story collection River Teeth; the nonfiction collection and National Book Award finalist, My Story as Told by Water; the best-selling collection of “churchless sermons," God Laughs & Plays; and, August 2023, the novel legendary editor Michael Pietsch “will immodestly call David’s magnum opus” and writer William deBuys calls “one of the greatest imaginative achievements I’ve encountered in a lifetime of reading," Sun House. David’s work has won three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, a Lannan Fellowship, the Western States Book Award, inclusion in Best American Sports Writing, Best American Catholic Writing, two volumes of Best American Essays, five volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing, an honorary doctorate from University of Portland, the American Library Association's 2004 Award for the Preservation of Intellectual Freedom (with co-author Wendell Berry), and other honors. David lives on a charming little trout stream in Missoula, Montana, in accord with his late friend Jim Harrison’s advice to finish his life disguised as a creek.

Photo Credit: Chris La Tray

www.davidjamesduncan.com

Set amid the gorgeous landscapes of the American West, Sun House illuminates the contemporary world through the prisms of Eastern wisdom, cast-off ecstatic religious ideals, and the unpredictable, expansive yearnings of the human heart.

 

Javier Fuentes

Javier Fuentes is a Spanish American writer and a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, who earned an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University where he was a teaching fellow. Born in Barcelona, he lives in New York.

Photo Credit: Picky Talarico

www.javifuentes.com

This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.

 

Paul Harding

Paul Harding is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers, and Enon. He is director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island, New York.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

A novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.

 

Peter Heller

Peter Heller is the best-selling author of The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars, which has been published in twenty-two languages. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in poetry and fiction and lives in Denver, Colorado.

Photo Credit: John Burcham

www.peterhellerauthor.com

A vibrant, lyrical novel about an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth and stay alive.

 

Nishanth Injam

Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michi­gan. He received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review (which won the 2022 ASME Award for Fiction for its publication of his story), Catapult’s Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Born in Telangana, India, he now lives in Chicago.

Photo Credit: Divesh Raheja

www.nishanthinjam.com

An emotionally rich portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora and a yearning rendering of the people and places we call home…

 

Jenny Jackson

Jenny Jackson is a vice president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. A graduate of Williams College and the Columbia Publishing Course, she lives in Brooklyn Heights with her family. Pineapple Street is her first novel.

Photo Credit: Sarah Shatz

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan.

 

Anthony Marra

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award.

www.sites.prh.com/anthonymarra

The epic story of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive in 1940s Hollywood and fascist Europe, a timeless tale of love, deceit, and sacrifice—and a perfect book club pick—from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.

 

Nathaniel Ian Miller

Nathaniel Ian Miller’s debut novel, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, a #1 Indie Next Pick in 2021., was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been translated into multiple languages. He has written for the Virginia Quarterly Review, Orion, and newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin and Montana. He lives with his family on a farm in Vermont.

www.nathanielianmiller.com

One man banishes himself to a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, and is saved by good friends, a loyal dog, and a surprise visit that changes everything.

 

Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2020, among other works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Photo Credit: Ivory Orchid Photography

www.lydiamillet.net

Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks: In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?

 

Jenny Offill

Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize. She teaches at Bard College and lives in upstate New York.

www.jennyoffill.com

From the beloved author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation comes a “darkly funny and urgent” (NPR) tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis.

 

Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone is the author of Two Nights in Lisbon, The Paris Diversion, The Travelers, The Accident, and The Expats, for which he won both the Edgar Award and the Anthony Award. His novels have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal; are in development for film and television; and have been translated into two dozen languages. Pavone grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Cornell, and worked as a book editor for nearly two decades. He lives in New York City and on the North Fork of Long Island with his family.

Photo Credit: Sam McIntosh

www.chrispavone.com

A harrowing Hitchcockian novel of a woman under pressure -- how she acts, who believes her, and what she will resort to when everything is on the line.

 

Brendan Slocumb

Brendan Slocumb is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He started playing violin at the age of nine and majored in music at the University of North Carolina. In addition to performing in orchestras, he also worked as a K-12 music teacher. The Violin Conspiracy is his debut work as a novelist, followed by Symphony of Secrets.

Photo Credit: David Bickley

www.brendanslocumb.com

A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy: Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time—his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed.

Determined to uncover the truth that a powerful organization wants to keep hidden, Bern will stop at nothing to right history’s wrongs and give Josephine the recognition she deserves.

 

Peter Swanson

Peter Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous 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 Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller and Kirkus Reviews book of the year. 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 (UK), The Strand Magazine, and Yankee magazine. He lives outside of Boston, where he is at work on his next novel.

Photo Credit: Emily Tirella

www.peter-swanson.com

A private eye starts to follow a possibly adulterous husband, but little does he know that the twisted trail will lead back to the woman who hired him.

 

Thao Thai

Thao Thai lives in Ohio with her husband and daughter. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Real Simple, Catapult, and other publications. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University and her MA from The University of Chicago. 

www.thaowrites.com

A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens and buried secrets.

 

Laura Warrell

Laura Warrell is a contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Summer Workshop, and is a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She has taught creative writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and through the Emerging Voices Fellowship at PEN America in Los Angeles, where she lives.

Photo Credit: Rachel Warecki

www.laurawarrell.com

A novel about the perennial temptations of dangerous love, told by the women who love Circus Palmer—trumpet player and old-school ladies’ man—as they ultimately discover the power of their own voices.

 

Laura Zigman

Laura Zigman is the author of five novels, including Separation Anxiety (which was optioned by Julianne Nicholson and the production company Wiip for a limited television series); Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Her, and Piece of Work. She has ghostwritten/collaborated on several works of non-fiction, including Eddie Izzard's New York Times bestseller, Believe Me; 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. Her sixth novel, Small World, was published in January 2023. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Photo Credit: Adrianne Mathiowetz

www.laurazigman.com

From bestselling author Laura Zigman comes a heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults—and finally reckon with their childhood.