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.

Hillary Jordan

HILLARY JORDAN is the author of Mudbound, a first novel that won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded to a debut novel that addresses issues of social justice. She has been featured in the Discover Great New Writers program at Barnes & Noble. Hilary grew up in Texas and Oklahoma and received her M.F.A. from Columbia University.

Jenny Joseph

Jenny Joseph lives in the Cotswalds in England. She is best known, locally, for her poem Warning, which begins, “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple….” She has authored several books of poetry, most recently The Inland Sea, (published by Papier-Mache Press in Watsonville, California), and six children’s books, as well as Persephone, her fiction in prose and verse, which won the James Tait Black award for fiction in 1986.

Rachel Kadish

A sophisticated work of historical fiction, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two remarkable women separated by centuries, that centers on a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents. This literary intrigue, filled with memorable characters, is both electrifying and intimate in tone, and received the 2017 National Jewish Book Award. Rachel Kadish’s previous novels are, From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story.

Kristiana Kahakauwila

Kristiana Kahakauwila, a native Hawaiian,earned a BA from Princeton and an MFA from the University of Michigan. She wrote and edited forWine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado, and is now an assistant professor of creative writing at Western Washington University. Kristiana’s debut short story collection, This Is Paradise, captures the grit and glory of modern Hawaii.

Nora Okja Keller

In her exceptional first novel, Comfort Women, Nora Okja Keller fashions exquisite images to reveal the youthful Beccah’s painful need for a normal home life amidst the tormenting memories of her Korean mother Akiko. Sold at age twelve to service soldiers from the occupying army, Akiko hides her past from the daughter she fiercely loves, retreating into a recurring psychosis and the world of spirits.

Elaine Kendall

As a matter of fact

Afternoon Session
Elaine Kendall, author of The Upper Hand, The Happy Mediocrity, and Peculiar Institutions… and Los Angeles Times critic. She is joined by Betty Harper Fussell for this presentation.

Elizabeth Kendall

Elizabeth Kendall, praised as “one of our most astute film and dance historians,” shares her social insights of the arts. Kendall is a teacher, journalist, scriptwriter, consultant, lecturer and author of the wonderfully entertaining Where She Danced, about the origins of modern dance in America, and The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930’s, an intriguing analysis that vividly evokes the way Hollywood reflected and shaped the character of the American woman.

Susan Kenney

Susan Kenney’s novel, In Another Country, won the 1984 New Voice Literary Award and has been published in four languages. The Colby College, Maine, teacher of English has been published extensively for over a decade in a variety of genres. Her novels include Garden of Malice and Graves of Academe. Kenney’s slide presentation will relate the fact and fiction of place.

Karen Kenyon

Breaking The Silence: Writing Your Autobiography

Karen Kenyon, author of Sunshower, teams up with Louise De Grave to discuss the writing of their own stories, encouraging others to do the same.

Bernice Kert

Bernice Kert’s fascinating book, The Hemingway Women, is about Ernest Hemingway’s relationships with his mother, his four wives, and other women important to his life. Ten years in the researching and writing, this is Mrs. Kert’s first published book, and the welcome given it by critics and public alike has enabled her to know the joys of “sweet success at sixty.”

Denise Kiernan

In her most recent book, The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the story of the women who worked on the Manhattan Project, who unknowingly helped to create fuel for the world’s first atomic bomb. A journalist, producer, and author, Denise’s work has appeared inThe New York Times as well as many other national publications.

Haven Kimmel

With wry humor, HAVEN KIMMEL vividly portrays the quirky world of adults in a best-selling childhood memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Moorland Indiana. Kimmel’s affection for her characters and remarkable wit also mark her celebrated debut novel, The Solace of Leaving Early, a love story sparked with theological and philosophical debate.

Laurie R. King

With Laurie R. King, readers get not one ingenious, articulate woman sleuth, but two: Oxford student Mary Russell, who finds herself leagued with a mostly retired Sherlock Holmes, and police detective Kate Martinelli, who solves homicides in present-day San Francisco. Winner of the Edgar, The Nero Wolfe, and Britain’s John Creasey Dagger awards, King challenges and delights in these two intricate, well crafted series.

Lily King

Award-winning author Lily King’s recent bestseller, Euphoria, received both the Kirkus Prize and New England Award for Fiction. Many publications listed it as a Best Book of the Year, including the New York Times Book Review. King’s brilliant novel, inspired by an incident in Margaret Mead’s life, charts the path of three anthropologists isolated in remote New Guinea as their relationship unravels due to their rivaling scientific careers and the drum beat of sexual tension between them. This is King’s fourth award winning novel.

Barbara Kingsolver

Add Barbara Kingsolver’s distinctive voice to those who write vividly and authentically about women. Publisher’s Weekly hailed her first novel, The Bean Trees, as “an overwhelming delight, as random and unexpected as real life.” The New York Times Book Review found in the characters of Homeland, her collection of twelve short stories, “a moral toughness…that one sees in real people everywhere but rarely in recent American short stories.” Most recently, in her nonfiction book Holding the Line, she has turned her attention to the roles played by women in the copper mine strike of 1983.

Dr. Perri Klass

DR. PERRY KLASS is the award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, The Mystery of Breathing, Love and Modern Medicine and A Not Entirely Benign Procedure. She is also a pediatrician who is medical director of the national literary program Reach Out and Read dedicated to promoting literacy as part of pediatric primary care.

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jean Hanff Korelitz is a prolific writer in several genres. Her essays have appeared in Vogue and Newsweek. One of her novels, Admission, was made into a popular movie, and she has authored novels for children as well as a book of poems. Her most recent novel, You Should Have Known, is an absorbing literary mystery. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge, she currently lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

Barbara Kroll

‘Twas A Dark And Stormy Night…

Barbara Kroll, humorist, teacher, essay contest enterer, researcher, and first-runner up in the Bulwer-Lytton contest for writing the “worst” opening sentence.

Carroll Lachnit

Carroll Lachnit informs the mystery with her print journalism experience. Murder in Brief introduces cop-turned-lawyer Hannah Barlow. In A Blessed Death, she probes related mysteries of faith, family, and a woman’s demise. Hannah studies independent adoption in Blood Ties soon.

Kirsten Lagatree

Kirsten Lagatree explains that her book, Feng Shui: Arranging Your Home to Change Your Life, holds ancient Asian wisdom “for the rest of us.” This simple and highly readable work describes the what, why and how of feng shui, also known as the Chinese art of placement. It gives a room-by-room guide to transforming your home and office in ways that can bring about positive changes in your life.

Dottie Lamm

Dottie Lamm wrote her delightful book Second Banana as a result of her experiences as the wife of Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado. She is also a television talk show host and a popular columnist for the Denver Post.

Jill Marie Landis

Jill Marie Landis was a member of our Literary Women planning committee until she got so busy writing her first novel that we had to give her some time off. We are delighted that her talent and hard work won her the Golden Heart Award for her first historical romance, Sunflower, published by Berkley Books in 1988. Named “best new historical writer in 1987-88” by Romantic Times, Jill will have two books out in 1989 and yet more in 1990!