Conference
Author
Saturday, February 28 • 7 pm
Tickets $45 (includes fees)
Ariel Lawhon - The Frozen River
Megan Abbott - El Dorado Drive
Katherine Center - The Love Haters
Rickey Fayne - The Devil Three Times
Robert Gwaltney - The Cicada Tree
Hank Phillippi Ryan - All This Could Be Yours
Lindy Ryan - Another Fine Mess
Ariel Lawhon is a critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction celebrated for blending rich research with powerful storytelling. Her novels include The Frozen River, Code Name Hélène, I Was Anastasia, Flight of Dreams, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress, and When We Had Wings (co-written with Kristina McMorris and Susan Meissner). Her works have been selected for the Good Morning America Book Club, LibraryReads, Indie Next, Book of the Month and other national reading programs.
Lawhon’s books have been translated into numerous languages and praised for their emotional depth and strong female protagonists. She lives with her husband and four sons in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee, where she balances her writing life with family, baseball and grocery runs.
Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–winning author of Beware the Woman, The Turnout, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, and several other acclaimed thrillers. Her work, known for its psychological tension and sharp insight into human desire, has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Salon and The Wall Street Journal. Abbott has been nominated for numerous honors, including the CWA Steel Dagger, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and multiple Edgar Awards. A Detroit native, Abbott earned her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University. She is co-creator and showrunner of the television series Dare Me, based on her novel, and has written for HBO’s The Deuce. She lives and writes in New York.
Katherine Center is a New York Times bestselling author beloved for her heartwarming, funny and deeply human novels about resilience and joy. Her books, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire and The Bodyguard, have been called “comfort reads” by BookPage and praised by The Dallas Morning News as “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Her novel The Lost Husband was adapted into a hit Netflix film, and Happiness for Beginners followed as a Netflix Original in 2023. Center lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two children and their energetic dog.
Rickey Fayne is a fiction writer from rural West Tennessee whose work explores identity, faith, and the legacy of the American South. His stories have appeared in The New York Times, American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Sewanee Review and The Kenyon Review. Fayne holds an MA in English from Northwestern University and an MFA in Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. A recipient of fellowships from Tin House, Bread Loaf, Sewanee and Yaddo, he currently teaches fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Robert Gwaltney is the award-winning author of The Cicada Tree and recipient of the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel. His work captures the lyricism and complexity of Southern life. A graduate of Florida State University, Gwaltney also received the 2022 Pat Conroy Writers Residency. He serves on the board of the Broadleaf Writers Association and is Vice President of Easterseals North Georgia, a nonprofit supporting children with disabilities. His forthcoming novel, Sing Down the Moon, will be published by Mercer University Press in 2026. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of 16 psychological thrillers known for their twisty plots and strong, smart heroines. Her work has earned five Agatha Awards, five Anthony Awards and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Ryan is also an on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, where she has won 37 Emmy Awards for her journalism. Her latest novel, All This Could Be Yours, has been praised by People magazine as “a nail-biting thriller” and by Library Journal as “a must-read.” She hosts Crime Time on A Mighty Blaze and co-hosts The Back Room and First Chapter Fun.
Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author, editor and filmmaker celebrated for championing women’s voices in horror and speculative fiction. Her books and anthologies have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal, and several have been adapted for screen. In 2020, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, and in 2022, Shelf Awareness called her one of horror’s “most masterful anthology curators.” Ryan is the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue and teaches at Rutgers University. Born in Southeast Texas, she now lives on the East Coast.