2025 Featured Authors and Participants

Phot credit: Gaby Deimeke

Jennifer Baker

Jennifer Baker is an author and editor/project manager with more than 20 years’ experience in book publishing. She’s also the creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast and has been a faculty member in Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction program and at The City College of New York. In 2019, she was named a Publishers Weekly Superstar for her contributions to inclusion and representation in publishing and was a recipient of the 2024 Axinn Writing Award from Adelphi University. Baker is the author of Forgive Me Not (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023), a 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Forgive Me Not was also listed as a 2023 New York Public Library Best Book for Teens and a 2023 Best of the Best by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was included on the Texas Library Association’s 2024 TAYSHAS Reading List and the Capitol Choices 2024 Noteworthy Books for Teens. She also edited the short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018). Her works of fiction, nonfiction and criticism have appeared in various print and online publications.

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Sarah Blumenstock

Sarah Blumenstock, senior editor at Berkley Books (Penguin Random House), started her career selling foreign and domestic rights for Penguin Young Readers before joining Berkley in 2016. She acquires bold, immersive romance and women’s fiction novels, and works with bestselling authors including Ali Hazelwood, Evie Dunmore, Karina Halle, Jo Segura, Mimi Matthews and Liana De la Rosa.

Coe Booth

Coe Booth was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. She is the author of several award-winning novels for children and young adults, including Tyrell, Bronxwood, Kinda Like Brothers and Caprice. Her novel Tyrell was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time. She is the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and her books have been selected as the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, The New York Times Editors’ Choice, and NPR’s Best Books. Coe’s short work has appeared in many anthologies, including This Is Push: New Stories From the Edge and Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. Coe received an MFA in creative writing from The New School.

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Vanessa Chan

Vanessa Chan is the Malaysian author of internationally bestselling The Storm We Made, a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The novel, her first, will be translated into more than 20 languages worldwide. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more.

Blyth Daylong

Blyth Daylong (Executive Director, Adelphi University Performing Arts Center) has been working in the performing arts since junior high.  A graduate of the Stage Management program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he has collaborated closely with artists in dance, music, theater and film.  Since joining Adelphi in the fall of 2011, he has had the pleasure of bringing award-winning artists to the stages and classrooms of Adelphi.  To keep Adelphi connected with professional artists, Blyth created the Larson Legacy Concert Series to showcase the next generation of Musical Theater creators, and was instrumental in establishing an annual summer residency with the New York Theatre Workshop.  Prior to joining Adelphi, he worked at the University of Miami and the American Film Institute Conservatory.

Alex DeMille

Alex DeMille is a filmmaker and novelist. He grew up on Long Island and received a BA from Yale University and an MFA in film directing from UCLA. His films have played at festivals worldwide and have won many awards and fellowships. The Deserter and Blood Lines, his two novels co-written with his father, Nelson DeMille, were instant New York Times bestsellers. Their follow-up and final collaboration, The Tin Men, will be published in fall 2025. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.

Jessica Diaz

Latinx artivist and Bronx native Jessica Diaz credits her urban roots and Puerto Rican heritage for fueling her lifelong commitment to education, advocacy and the arts.  Some of her works can be found in the BX Writers Anthology: Volume One & Two, Year Gone Hazy: Send-Offs to 2020, Asteri(x) Journal, The Sims Library of Poetry and Barrio Panther: Vol. 4, and her spoken word play, Latin América, was recently produced at The Hudson Theatres in Los Angeles, California. Jessica lives and works in the Bronx, New York.

Barbara Forste

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a graduate of Ohio University, Barbara Forste is a lifelong supporter of the arts, literacy and education. In addition to diverse volunteer involvement, she has worked in market research for Procter & Gamble, as a second grade teacher in a small coal mining town, and as a “child wrangler” for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera and American Ballet Theater. She is a co-founder and director of The Children’s Circle, a National Association for the Education of Young Children school in Bergenfield, New Jersey.

Barbara is the mother of eight now-adult children (and grandmother of 13) who are committed readers involved in the arts and various creative pursuits. Her very busy daughter Sarah Jessica Parker is well-known as an actress, producer and publisher.

Chee Gates

Chee Gates is an alumnus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing in 2003. She’s currently enrolled in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Adelphi University, where she’s working on a self-help memoir that meanders into poetry.

Chee began her professional career as an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and Fitness before transitioning into content marketing for Fortune 500 companies, such as Sears Holdings, Bed Bath & Beyond, MetLife, and Amazon. She’s currently the head of content strategy for small and medium business marketing at Amazon Ads. Her writing has appeared in various publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine, Fitness, Family Circle, Real Health, and an anthology of essays, Bet on Black: African-American Women Celebrate Fatherhood in the Age of Barack Obama (Kifani Press, 2013).

She lives in central New Jersey with a too-big backyard, a stuffed beagle and six desert plants.

Louise Geddes

Louise Geddes is Associate Dean for Student Success in the College of Arts and Sciences and is Professor of English at Adelphi University. She is the author of Appropriating Shakespeare: A Cultural History of Pyramus and Thisbe and The Shakespeare Multiverse: Fandom as Literary Praxis. She is the General Editor of Borrowers and Lenders: A Journal of Shakespeare Appropriation.

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Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova graduated as valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. Acclaimed as the Oliver Sacks of fiction and the Michael Crichton of brain science, she is the New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Remember: The Science of Memory & the Art of Forgetting. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore. Adaptations of four of her other novels are in development. Lisa’s TED talks on Alzheimer’s disease and memory have been viewed more than 11 million times. Her new novel, More or Less Maddy, was just released on January 14, 2025.

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Robin Gow

Robin Gow (it/fae/he & él y elle) is a Lambda Literary Award-winning poet and community educator. It grew up in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and lives with his partner Rain and their menagerie of animals on unceded Lenape land also called Allentown, Pennsylvania. Fae is the author of a poetry collection and young adult and middle grade novels. His titles include Lanternfly August, Dear Mothman and A Million Quiet Revolutions, earning starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, and more.

Jan-Henry Gray

Jan-Henry Gray (he/him), assistant professor of English, is the author of Documents, winner of BOA Editions’ A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (chosen by D.A. Powell) and finalist for the 2019 Thom Gunn Award. His chapbook, Selected Emails, was published by speCt! Books. His poems have been included in various anthologies, including Undocupoetics: An Introduction (HarperCollins/Harper Perennial, 2025), Permanent Record (Nightboat, 2024), Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry (Green Linden Press, 2024), Queer Nature (Autumn House, 2022) and Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat, 2018). His other writings, including essays and reviews, have been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Daily, The Rumpus, The Margins, DIAGRAM, Colorado Review, Newcity and Teachers & Writers Magazine.

Ellen Hagan

Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer and educator. Her books include: Reckless, Glorious, Girl, Don’t Call Me a Hurricane and All That Shines. She has a new YA project forthcoming in 2025 with her partner, David Flores. Ellen’s poems and essays can be found in O, the Oprah Magazine, ESPNW, So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (edited by Aracelis Girmay); Creative Nonfiction, and Underwired Magazine.

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Alvin Hall

Alvin Hall is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, author and renowned financial educator. His 10-episode podcast series, Driving the Green Book, was the winner of the inaugural Ambie Award for Best History podcast (2021) and winner of New York Festivals Gold Award as the Best Narrative Documentary Podcast (2021). His numerous radio programs include Alvin Hall’s Other America (BBC World Service), Diane Arbus: Intimate Portraits (BBC Radio 4, winner of New York Festivals Finalist Award), The Tulsa Tragedy That Shamed America (BBC Radio 4), The Green Book (BBC Radio 4), and Jay-Z: From Brooklyn to the Board Room (BBC Radio 4, winner of the Wincott Award for financial and business journalism). For five years on BBC2 television, he hosted the highly rated and award-winning series, Your Money or Your Life, on which he offered both practical and psychological advice about personal finance. His children’s book, Show Me the Money (Dorling Kindersley Children’s, 2016), has been published in more than 20 foreign language editions. His most recent book, Driving the Green Book (Amistad), was a winner of the 2024 Honors Award for Nonfiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. He is currently producing his first feature-length documentary on the iconic Lorraine Motel. He is chair of MoMA’s Black Arts Council and co-chair of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Advisory Council as well as being a board member of the New York City AIDS Memorial and The Conversation U.S.

Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs was dubbed “Jane Austen with a schmear” by NPR’s book critic. Among her fifteen best-selling novels are Compromising Positions, Lily White, and Shining Through. She has also written screenplays for two films. Before she took to books, she was an editor at Seventeen magazine and a freelance political speechwriter.

An alumna of Queens College, Isaacs chaired the board of directors of Poets & Writers, the literary organization, for 20 years. She is past president of Mystery Writers of America and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, PEN, and the International Association of Crime Writers. Among her honors are the John Steinbeck Award, the Writers for Writers award, and the Marymount Manhattan Writing Center prize.

Her fifteenth novel–and second of the Corie Geller series–Bad, Bad Seymour Brown–received rave reviews from critics. Her upcoming book (featuring Corie and company), Afternoon Delight, will be published by Atlantic Monthly Press early next year. She and her husband, a criminal defense lawyer, live on Long Island. Their children and grandchildren live nearby.

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Zakiya N. Jamal

Zakiya N. Jamal was born in Queens, raised in Long Island, and currently resides in Brooklyn. In other words, she’s a New Yorker through and through. She holds a BA in English from Georgetown University and a MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Children and Young Adults from The New School. Her debut novel, If We Were a Movie, will be published on April 22 by HarperTeen. Her adult debut, Sparks Fly, will be published by Berkley on December 2. You can find her on social media at @ZakiyaNJamal.

Scott James

Scott James ’84 is a veteran journalist and author of the book Trial by Fire, an investigation into one of America’s deadliest criminal cases, The Station nightclub fire that killed 100. Since 2009 Scott’s reporting has appeared in The New York Times, and he is the recipient of three Emmy Awards for his work in television news. He’s also the author of two bestselling novels, SoMa and The Sower.

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Matthew Klam

Matthew Klam is the author of the novel Who Is Rich?, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, nominated for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize; Sam the Cat, winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection; and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, First Fiction. He’s a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His writing has been featured in such places as The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The O’ Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction. He’s currently a visiting associate professor of creative writing at Stony Brook University.

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Ann Leary

Ann Leary is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Foundling, The Children, The Good House, Outtakes From a Marriage, and the memoir An Innocent, A Broad. She has written for numerous publications, including Ploughshares, NPR, Real Simple and The New York Times. The Good House was adapted as a motion picture starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline in 2022, and her new essay collection, I’ve Tried Being Nice, will soon be out in paperback. Ann and her husband, Denis Leary, live in New York.

Rob Linné

Rob Linné, PhD, is a professor of education and cultural studies at Adelphi University. His recent creative nonfiction works have appeared in Texas Architect Magazine, Southern Grit Magazine and Level Deep South. Rob is a co-founder and director of the Alice Hoffman Young Writers Retreat.

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Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of 16 books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel’s Bed, I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays, On Turpentine Lane and Rachel to the Rescue. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, became a 2008 feature film, directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. She was the 2011–2012 Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College and divides her time between Manhattan and New York’s Hudson Valley.

Ed Mabrey

Ed Mabrey is the greatest poet in the history of Poetry Slam—four World Championships, seven Regional Championships and more than 500 wins. An NAACP Image Award Nominee, Ed has been on TV One, as well as ABC, FOX, HBO, CNN, Crackle, CBS and NBC. He has performed at more than 400 colleges. A Cave Canem fellow, Watering Hole graduate fellow and Scioto Retreat Cohort, Ed is a Pushcart nominee and was commissioned to craft a speech encompassing the Freedom Award recipients for 2017–2021 on behalf of the National Civil Rights Museum. Ed is a choreopoet, screenwriter and actor. Most recently, he was a 2023–2024 Grammy Voting Member and a proud member of Phi Theta Kappa. He is a student in Adelphi University’s low-residency MFA program.

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Nicole Melleby

Nicole Melleby, a born-and-bred New Jersey native, is an award-winning children’s author. Her works have been Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selections, listed as best books of the year by Bank Street Books, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, and have been ALA Rainbow Book selections, a Lambda Literary Finalist, and listed on the CCBC Choices and ALA Notable Books lists. She is currently on the faculty of the Hamline University MFA for Writing for Children and Young Adults, and lives with her wife and their cats, whose need for attention oddly align with Nicole’s writing schedule.

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Lise Olsen

Lise Olsen is an investigative reporter and editor and the award-winning author of Code of Silence and The Scientist and the Serial Killer. Her reports have contributed to the prosecutions of a former congressman and a federal judge, inspired laws and reforms, helped solve cold cases and identify murder victims, and freed wrongfully held prisoners. Her writing has appeared in the Texas Observer, NBC News, the Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly and elsewhere. She is featured in Netflix’s The Texas Killing Fields, The Pillowcase Murders on Paramount+, CNN’s The Wrong Man, and the A&E series The Eleven. She lives near Houston, Texas, where she and her husband raised two boys of their own.

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Sarah Jessica Parker

Sarah Jessica Parker, an award-winning actor, producer and businesswoman, is the recipient of four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Emmy Awards. She has worked in the theater, on and off Broadway, since 1976, when she debuted on Broadway in The Innocents, directed by Harold Pinter, where her other credits include the title role in Annie, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Once Upon a Mattress. Her numerous film and television credits include L.A. Story, I Don’t Know How She Does It, Failure to Launch, The Family Stone, State and Main, Ed Wood, The First Wives Club, Miami Rhapsody, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Footloose; the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004), and its sequel, And Just Like That; as well as the films based on her iconic portrayal of Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City, and Sex and the City 2. Parker was most recently seen onstage opposite her husband, Matthew Broderick, in the revival of Neil Simon’s comedy Plaza Suite, which made its West End debut at the Savoy Theatre in London. Her performance earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2024 Olivier Awards.

A lifelong dedicated advocate for reading, writing, the arts and libraries, Parker runs SJP Lit, her own imprint, in partnership with independent publisher Zando, where she publishes thought-provoking, big-hearted stories inclusive of international and underrepresented voices. She has recently executive produced the documentary The Librarians through her award-winning production company, Pretty Matches Productions, which recently premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and highlights librarians across the country who have been fighting against book bans and standing up to the ideology that prevents children from having access to certain books and have put their lives and their families’ lives at risk as a result.

Parker currently serves as a vice-chair of the board of directors of the New York City Ballet, and in November 2009, the Obama administration elected her to be a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She recently became a member of The Partnership for New York City, a 501(c) organization dedicated to building partnerships between businesses and government to strengthen New York City, and she will be on the 2025 panel of judges for the prestigious British literary award, the Booker Prize. She has lived in Greenwich Village in New York City with her husband and three children since 2009.

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Helen Phillips

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum. Her novel The Need was a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A professor at Brooklyn College, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with artist/cartoonist Adam Douglas Thompson and their children. Find her on X @HelenCPhillips.

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Marysue Rucci

Marysue Rucci was named vice president, publisher of Scribner Books in February 2025. Prior to that she was vice president, editor in chief, publisher of Marysue Rucci Books, which she launched in 2021 after having been vice president and editor in chief of the Simon & Schuster imprint for nine years. Marysue acquires a range of bestselling and critically acclaimed fiction and narrative nonfiction. Over the course of her career, she has worked with celebrated authors, including Laura Dave, Jessica Knoll, Shonda Rhimes, Alice Hoffman, Paul Yoon, Mona Awad, Megan Miranda, Helen Phillips, Ann Leary, Rebecca Traister and Vanessa Chan.

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Eliot Schrefer

Eliot Schrefer is a New York Times bestselling author, has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, received the Stonewall Honor for best LGBTQIA+ teen book, and received the Printz Honor for best young adult book from the ALA. In naming him an Editor’s Choice, The New York Times called his work “dazzling … big-hearted.” His science writing has appeared in Discover, Sierra, USA Today, Nautilus and The Washington Post Magazine. He has an MA in Animal Studies from NYU, is on the faculty of the Hamline MFA for writing for young people, and lives with his husband in New York City.

Esi Sogah

Esi Sogah (she/her) joined Berkley as an executive editor in 2022, acquiring commercial fiction and romance, working with authors including Elise Bryant, Ashley Jordan and Amelia Ireland. Her 20-year career began at William Morrow and Avon Books before she moved to Kensington Publishing in 2013, where she worked on a variety of fiction and nonfiction.

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René Steinke

René Steinke’s novel Friendswood, was named one of National Public Radio’s Great Reads, shortlisted for the St. Francis Literary Prize, and named an Amazon Book-of-the-Month. Darin Strauss called it “a large-hearted, big-brained book.” She is the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her second novel, Holy Skirts, a fictionalized biography of the Dada artist and poet the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her first novel is The Fires. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times; Vogue; O, The Oprah Magazine; Salon; 4Columns; Bookforum; and in anthologies. She is the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Adelphi University, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Joseph Earl Thomas

Joseph Earl Thomas is the author of Sink, a memoir, the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, winner of the Center for Fiction first novel prize, and the forthcoming short story collection Leviathan Beach. His writing has been published in The Kenyon Review, Vanity Fair, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harpers, The Paris Review and elsewhere.

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Raisa Tolchinsky

Raisa Tolchinsky’s poetry explores the wisdom of the body and what it means to listen imaginatively. She is the author of Glass Jaw (Persea Books, 2024), winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, which is about the world of women’s boxing. She has held improvised typewriter poetry sites everywhere from college campuses to hospital waiting rooms. Raisa holds an MFA from the University of Virginia, an MRPL from Harvard Divinity School, and a BA from Bowdoin College. In 2022–2023, she served as the writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter Academy. Currently, she is the creative writing specialist at Harvard Divinity School. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois.

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Adrianna Trigiani

Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of 21 books of fiction and nonfiction, and an award-winning playwright, television writer/producer and filmmaker. She is host of the hit podcast, You Are What You Read, where she interviews the great luminaries of our times. Adriana was named Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia by President Sergio Mattarella of Italy. She grew up in the mountains of southwest Virginia, where she co-founded The Origin Project, a year- round, in-school writing program serving students K–12 across the state. Trigiani is honored to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York City with her family.

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Lee Woodruff

As co-author of the bestselling In an Instant (Random House, 2008), Lee Woodruff garnered critical acclaim for the compelling and humorous chronicle of her family’s journey to recovery following her husband Bob’s roadside bomb injury in Iraq. Appearing together on national media since the February 2007 publication of their book, the couple founded the Bob Woodruff Foundation to assist wounded service members and their families. To date, they have raised more than $95 million to help veterans successfully reintegrate into their communities and receive care. Lee Woodruff has been a contributing reporter for CBS This Morning and Good Morning America. Her bestselling book Perfectly Imperfect—A Life in Progress (Random House, 2010), was followed by her first novel, Those We Love Most (Voice, 2012). A freelance writer and print journalist, she currently runs a media/speaker training business.

Photo credit: @AdrianneMathiowetz

Laura Zigman

Laura Zigman is the author of six novels, including Small World (a New York Times Group Text pick and New York Times Editor’s Choice), Separation Anxiety (which was optioned by Julianne Nicholson and the production company Wiip (Mare of Easttown) for a limited television series), and Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd). She has ghostwritten/collaborated on several works of nonfiction, including Eddie Izzard’s New York Times bestseller Believe Me, has been a contributor to The New York Times and other publications, and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she helps clients via Zoom, phone, and sometimes in person with their writing as Zigman Freud, Writing Therapist. She is at work on two new novels.