Elsa Hart

Elsa Hart’s beautiful writing seems inspired by the years she has lived abroad. Her first book, Jade Dragon Mountain, an acclaimed mystery novel, is set in Southwest China. Its sequel, The White Mirror, follows the humble librarian, Li Du, as he journeys near the border of Tibet and becomes entangled in yet another mystery. Hart’s writing is smart, full of historical and cultural references.

Born in Rome, where her father was a foreign correspondent, Hart moved to Moscow when she was two. Since then, she has lived in the Czech Republic, the U.S., and China. Her third novel to be published in 2018, continues to explore the power of narrative to shape story and empires.

Nadia Hashimi

Set in Afghanistan, When The Moon Is Low follows Fereiba as she finally discovers love and fulfillment, only to have it threatened when the Talilban assume power. Fereiba and her family are forced to escape the country, throwing them into the nightmarish world of illegal immigration. Nadia Hashimi’s haunting novel is worthy of the praise and starred reviews it has received.

Ursula Hegi

Ursula Hegi lived the first eighteen years of her life in Germany. She is the award-winning author of three novels, Intrusions, Floating in My Mother’s Palm, and Stones from the River, a major novel of Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. Her next novel, Salt Dancers, is scheduled for publication in 1995.

Judith Ryan Hendricks

The central character of Judith Ryan Hendricks’ first novel, Bread Alone, turns emotional trauma into personal triumph by rediscovering her passion for baking. Booklist calls it “charmingly romantic…fun to read…meaningful to remember.” Hendricks, a Long Beach writer, is currently at work on her second novel.

Cristina Henriquez

A love story, as well as a tribute to the modern-day immigrant experience, The Book of Unknown Americans, Cristina Henriquez’s third book, is a novel that the San Francisco Chronicle says “can both make you think and break your heart.” Cristina’s fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and other publications. She lives in Illinois.

Hayden Herrera

HAYDEN HERRERA wrote Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, on which the film Frida was based. She has lectured extensively on 20h century art, written essays for numerous art magazines and, as curator of special exhibits, for museum catalogs. Her other books include Frida Kahlo: The Paintings; Matisse: A Portrait; and, more recently, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work.

Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark has kept her readers avidly turning the pages through six best-selling suspense novels: Where Are the Children? (the film starred Jill Clayburgh), A Stranger Is Watching, The Cradle Will Fall, A Cry in the Night, Stillwatch, and last year, Weep No More, My Lady. A grandmother, she seems to know what most frightens women, taps into this anxiety and entertains them by letting them live their fears safely, through an escape into her books.

Laura Hillman

LAURA HILLMAN’s I Will Plant You A Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler’s List Survivor is an account of her harrowing odyssey through eight concentration camps during World War II. Told in plain, clear prose, it is a story of astonishing power and of “keeping courage and hope and love alive in the harshest of times.”

Susan Tyler Hitchcock

SUSAN TYLER HITCHOCK, author of the recently published Frankenstein: A Cultural History is a prolific non-fiction writer and editor. She has written professionally for more than 30 years, contributing to newspapers, magazines and essay anthologies as well as writing her own books, including Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London and Gather Ye Wild Things: A Forager’s Year.

Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan’s The Book of Medicines, a work of poetry, “feels like a gift from the earth’s past to the present moment,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver, who described the Chicasaw poet’s first novel, Mean Spirit, a finalist for 1991 Pulitzer Prize, as “North American magic realism …a vast tragedy… carved to fit the human heart.” Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a NEA grant, among numerous awards, Linda Hogan teaches at the University of Colorado.

Nathalia Holt

Author Nathalia Holt’s recent book, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars, relates the illuminating story of the young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, and launched America into space. This work follows her previous book, Cured: The People Who Defeated HIV.

Both author and science journalist, her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Time, and Popular Science. She is a former fellow at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard University. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Boston, MA.

Nancy Horan

NANCY HORAN’s bestselling debut novel, Loving Frank, delves into the life of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his relationship with Mamah Borthwick Cheney during the years 1907 to 1914. The novel is based on seven years of meticulous research. Horan beautifully blends fact and fiction garnering widespread praise from critics and readers.

Wendy Hornsby

Wendy Hornsby’s novel, No Harm, just published by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., was called a “tightly controlled first mystery” in August by Publisher’s Weekly. It deals with the chicanery and death over a piece of California waterfront property. Publishing has brought confidence to this writer and she has a second mystery ready. She lives in Long Beach with her husband and children.

Pam Houston

Pam Houston, in her newest book Waltzing the Cat, explores the life of Lucy, an award-winning landscape photographer. Author of the widely acclaimed short story collection, Cowboys Are My Weakness, Houston once again inspires and challenges her readers with an engaging, unconventional heroine, who takes physical and emotional risks.

Ladee Hubbard

In Ladee Hubbard’s imaginative and engrossing second novel, The Rib King, the reader is dropped into the circa 1914 daily whirl of Black servants in a fading, but well-to-do household. The escapades of these hardworking, innovative people create a suspenseful page turner as a network of interests compete to take advantage of them. This illuminating examination of a troubled period sheds light on those who thrive despite prevalent racism.

Susan Hubbel

Susan Hubbel’s A Country Year reflects her discoveries on a peninsula between the Ozark Mountains. Before becoming a commercial beekeeper, Hubbel managed a bookstore and was a librarian. A burgeoning cult has developed around her book, only published in 1986.

Josephine Humphreys

Josephine Humphreys lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Her lyrical and introspective novel Dreams of Sleep has received PEN’s 1985 Ernest Hemingway prize for a first novel.

Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven is the award-winning author of three novels. Her latest, Blame, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and deals with the issues of guilt, redemption, and the painful soul-searching that results from the aftermath of a deadly alcohol-fueled accident that caused a double homicide. She also wrote Jamesland and Roundrock.

Eowyn Ivey

Gifted storyteller Eowyn Ivey’s newest work, To the Bright Edge of the World, is a haunting historical novel about an 1885 wilderness expedition into Alaska’s Northern interior. It is a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, a Library Journal Top 10 Book of 2016, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, and was awarded the 2017 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.

Her debut novel, The Snow Child, was an international bestseller published in more than 25 languages and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Eowyn’s essays and short fiction have appeared in London’s Observer Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Alaska Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and the North Pacific Rim literary journal Cirque. She lives with her family in Alaska

Kay Redfield Jamison

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON is an internationally acclaimed professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1995 she published her groundbreaking and exquisitely wrought memoir, An Unquiet Mind which chronicles her struggle with bipolar disorder. Other bestselling works include, Night Falls Fast and Touched With Fire. Her latest book, Nothing Was the Same, has just been released.

J. A. Jance

J. A. JANCE is a New York Times bestselling author of over 50 books. Before becoming a published author, however, she was a school librarian, a teacher and an insurance sales woman. Jance creates characters you care about, from J.P. Beaumont, a Pacific Northwest homicide detective, to Joanna Brady, an Arizona sheriff. Her most recently released mystery is Cold Betrayal. Born in South Dakota, raised in Arizona, she now divides her time between Seattle and Tucson.

Robin Johnson

Trampling Out the Vintage

Morning Session
Robin Johnson, PhD, poet-in-residence at Pepperdine University joins Ann Stanford, Ph.D., poet, and editor of The Women Poets in English for this discussion.

Diane Johnson

Diane Johnson blends accurate observation of contemporary life with satiric comments and unexpected humor in her powerful novels. Her current Persian Nights, set in Iran when the Shah’s power was crumbling, features an American wife and mother struggling to understand Iranian society and to fulfill herself as well. Other novels are Loving Hands at Home, Burning, and The Shadow Knows. Her biographies are: Lesser Lives and Dashiell Hammett: book reviews are collected in Terrorists and Novelists.

Joyce Johnson

Joyce Johnson is the author of the acclaimed memoir Minor Characters that chronicles her experiences with the Beat Generation writers, and the forthcoming Door Wide Open, a collection of letters written between Jack Kerouac and Johnson during their love affair in 1957 and 1958. An accomplished memoir and fiction writer Johnson’s work has appeared in New Yorker, Harpers, New York Times Magazine, and many other publications.

Tayari Jones

An American Marriage is the story of newlyweds - a young African-American golden couple poised for success – who are torn apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. It is at heart a love story that looks deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward with hope and conviction. Tayari Jones has authored three other novels, Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow.