KEYNOTES

  • Walter Mosley is the author of 60 critically-acclaimed books of fiction including the upcoming Easy Rawlins novel, Farewell, Amethystine; as well as works of nonfiction, memoir, and plays. His work has been translated into 25 languages. From the first novel he published, Devil in a Blue Dress with protagonist Easy Rawlins, Mosley’s work has explored the lives of Black men and women in America—past, present, and future.

  • Kim Michele Richardson is a New York Times bestselling American author from Kentucky known for her historical fiction, including the award-winning The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, and a bestselling memoir, The Unbreakable Child. Richardson, who grew up in poverty and foster care, now resides in Kentucky with her family, dogs, and has founded Shy Rabbit, a writers' residency and scholarship for low-income writers. Her work often focuses on themes of kindness, courage, compassion, and the power of literacy. 

  • Chris Whitaker is the author of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling All The Colours Of The Dark. His other acclaimed and bestselling novels include We Begin At The End, Tall Oaks, and All The Wicked Girls. 

    Chris’s novels have been translated into over thirty languages and selected for the Read With Jenna Book Club, Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Barnes & Noble Book Club, Good Morning America Book Club, and for BBC2’s Between The Covers. 

    All The Colours Of The Dark is currently in development with Universal Pictures. We Begin At The End is currently in development with A24.

    Chris was born in London and lives in the UK. 

  • Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, The Editor, named by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2019, The Guncle, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for 2021 Novel of the Year and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, The Celebrants, a TODAY Show Read With Jenna Book Club pick, the instant USA Today Bestseller The Guncle Abroad and the forthcoming novella The Dogs of Venice. His fiction has been published in twenty languages.Unbreakable Child. Richardson, who grew up in poverty and foster care, now resides in Kentucky with her family, dogs, and has founded Shy Rabbit, a writers' residency and scholarship for low-income writers. Her work often focuses on themes of kindness, courage, compassion, and the power of literacy. 

  • The Daring Women panel brings together extraordinary leaders, entrepreneurs, and writers who have transformed resistance, criticism, and even threats into fuel for their vision. Each has risen from adversity with resilience and optimism, turning pushback into creativity, justice, and innovation. By sharing their voices and gifts, these women not only defy the odds, they inspire us to face challenges with courage, learn from their example, and embrace the unstoppable power of persistence and hope.

  • Dr Jennifer Freed

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    Journalist and Author

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    Author & Founder of Mom’s Demand Action

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FEATURED AUTHORS + PRESENTERS

  • Megan Beatie is a veteran book publicist with almost 30 years of experience in publishing. As the president and CEO of Megan Beatie Communications (MBC), a book publicity and marketing agency based in Los Angeles, she has represented books by many bestselling authors, including Linda Ronstadt, Tess Gerritsen, Robert Dugoni, Lee Goldberg, Marcia Clark, Amina Akhtar, and Maureen Johnson. She’s a fifth generation native Californian from a Ventura County farming family. 

  • Meg Gardiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seventeen novels. Her thrillers have won the Edgar Award and been summer reading picks by The Today Show and O, the Oprah magazine. Heat 2, co-authored with Michael Mann, debuted at #1 on the New York Times best seller list. A former lawyer, two-time president of Mystery Writers of America, and three-time Jeopardy! champion, Gardiner lives in Austin.


  • Sara DiVello is an author and the creator/host of Mystery and @ThrillerMaven, a popular interview series and interactive Facebook group. Her most-recent book, Broadway Butterfly: A Thriller, was a CBS New York Book Club Pick, an Entertainment Weekly Most Anticipated Book, was featured in Vanity Fair, and earned starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. DiVello also serves as the co-chair of the @NantucketBookFestival, as the curator and host of the @SouthEndLibraryAuthorSeries, and on the boards of the Nantucket Book Foundation and the Friends of the South End Library.

  • Dawn Tripp is the nationally bestselling author of five novels. Her most recent, Jackie, a fictionalized biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award and won the San Diego Writers Historical Fiction Award. She is also the author of Georgia,  finalist for the New England Book Award and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature from the Library of Virginia. Previous novels include Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Conjunctions, NPR, and others. Her books have been published into a dozen languages. She graduated from Harvard and lives on the Massachusetts coast with her sons.

  • Laurie L. Dove is an award-winning journalist, professor and the Instant USA Today bestselling author of MASK OF THE DEER WOMAN (Berkley/Penguin Random House), a suspenseful mystery TheNew York Times called a “best new release” and TheSeattle Times called “a powerful read for fans of dark, riveting stories rooted in justice and resilience.” Her second book releases Fall 2026. Dove earned a graduate degree in creative writing and literature from an Ivy League university; she is writing her third and fourth novels, and a scripted series.

  • Faith Phillips, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is known for her work as a novelist, screenwriter, and producer living in the Ozark foothills. She created, wrote, and executive-produced the national docu-series The Girl Scout Murders in 2022.

    Her third book, Now I Lay Me Down, is an Oklahoma best seller selected for development with legendary documentarian Stanley Nelson and the HULU/Firelight Kindling Fund. Phillips adapted her true crime novel into an original pilot, Bad Creek Bridge, a finalist in the SeriesFest TV Lab. She is also the creator of the crime noir series Cadaver Dog. 

    Faith’s feature screenplay Mankiller Shell was selected as a finalist for the Almanack Screenwriters Colony. She was also named a 2024 recipient of the Netflix Native American Writer Accelerator Grant. Phillips recently signed with Bloomsbury Publishing to pen an MMIW true crime novel, due for release in 2026.

  • Mike Bender is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Awkward Family Photos and has written the Junior Library Guild selection, The Book About Nothing, The End Is Just The Beginning, The Most Serious Fart, and Bored Panda, which has been selected as one of Amazon's Best Children's Books of the Year. 

  • Leslie Lehr is a prize-winning author, breast cancer survivor, and women’s health activist. Her memoir A BOOB’S LIFE: How America’s Obsession with Breasts Shaped Me… and You, a “Must-Read” for People, Glamour, and Good Morning America, and a Women’s National Book Association “Great Read,” hit #1 in Feminist History the same day HBOMax optioned it as a comedy. Leslie’s essays appear in Time, Newsweek, Writers Digest, and the New York Times “Modern Love” column. Her novels include What A Mother Knows, Wife Goes On, and 66 Laps; nonfiction includes Welcome to Club Mom and Nesting (featured on Oprah), while her screenplays include the film “Heartless” that screened internationally for ten years. 

  • Timothy Schaffert is the author of seven novels, most recently a trilogy about war and entertainment: The Swan Gondola, set at a world’s fair in Omaha during the Spanish-American War; The Perfume Thief, about the French queer resistance during the occupation of Paris; and the national bestseller The Titanic Survivors Book Club, set in a Paris bookshop during WW1. His novels have been noted as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Oprah Book of the Week, and an LA Times Best Book of Summer, among other distinctions, and have been translated into French and Italian. He is also the editor of the 100-year-old literary quarterly Prairie Schooner, and co-editor of Zero Street Fiction, an LGBTQ+ series of the University of Nebraska Press.

  • Morgan Matson is the New York Times bestselling author of many books for children and teens. Her most recent Middle Grade novel, The Firefly Summer, was recognized on 14 state lists and her YA novel Second Chance Summer was the recipient of the California Book Award. She lives in Los Angeles.

  • Byron Lane is the author of the novels Big Gay Wedding and A Star Is Bored. The New York Times Book Review has called his writing "wildly funny and irreverent." He is a former assistant to actress and writer Carrie Fisher, a two-time Emmy Award winner for his work as a television news journalist, and the playwright behind the acclaimed show Tilda Swinton Answers an Ad On Craigslist. He's from New Orleans and lives in Palm Springs, California with his husband, The New York Times bestselling author Steven Rowley and their rescue dogs, Raindrop and Shirley.

  • Lisa Barr is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of THE GODDESS OF WARSAW, WOMAN ON FIRE, THE UNBREAKABLES and the award-winning FUGITIVE COLORS. Lisa served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post, managing editor of Today's Chicago Woman, managing editor of Moment magazine, and as an editor/reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Among the highlights of her career, Lisa covered the famous “handshake” between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and President Bill Clinton at the White House. Lisa has been featured on Good Morning America and Today for her work as an author and journalist. Woman On Fire and The Goddess of Warsaw have been optioned for film adaptation. 

  • Ellen O’Connell Whittet is a continuing lecturer in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara who studies creative nonfiction, media, dance writing, arts writing, and trauma. In 2024, she was awarded a Bazerman Fellowship to conduct research on how trauma-informed pedagogy impacts the creative nonfiction classroom, and won UCSB's Distinguished Teaching Award. Her memoir, What You Become in Flight (Melville House), was published in 2020, and her novel, BOOK OF HOURS, is forthcoming next Fall. Her creative nonfiction and journalism has been published in Time, Vogue, The Cut, The Atlantic, Vulture, The Paris Review, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. 

  • Stuart Gibbs is the author of five New York Times best selling middle grade book series: Spy School, FunJungle, Charlie Thorne, Moon Base Alpha and Once Upon a Tim, as well as The Last Musketeer and the DC graphic novel series Bruce Wayne: Not Super.  He lives with his family in Los Angeles.


  • Josie Cox is a journalist, author, and broadcaster who covers economic gender inequality and women’s history. She has worked on staff at Reuters, The Independent, and The Wall Street Journal. As a freelancer, she has written for Bloomberg, The Times, Business Insider, Salon, The Washington Post, The Spectator, The Guardian, Forbes, and many other publications.
    She regularly contributes to the BBC, both as a writer and broadcaster, and is a founding editor of The Persistent, a journalism platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices, where she writes a weekly column.
    Josie was a 2020/2021 Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School, holds a BA from the University of Bath in the U.K., and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She is an Associate Instructor in Columbia’s Strategic Communications program, serves on the board of the Grace Institute—a workforce training non-profit—and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Investing in Gender Parity.
    Her first book, WOMEN MONEY POWER: The Rise and Fall of Economic Inequality, was published in 2024.

  • Denny S. Bryce is a best-selling, award-winning author of historical fiction. A former dancer and public relations professional, Denny is an adjunct professor in the MFA program at Drexel University, a book critic for NPR, and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in USA Today and Harper's Bazaar.

  • Morgan Matson is the New York Times bestselling author of many books for children and teens. Her most recent Middle Grade novel, The Firefly Summer, was recognized on 14 state lists and her YA novel Second Chance Summer was the recipient of the California Book Award. She lives in Los Angeles.

  • Chris Pavone’s international thrillers include The Expats, winner of both the Edgar and Anthony awards, the instant bestseller Two Nights in Lisbon, and most recently The Doorman. 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. Chris grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Cornell, and was a book editor for nearly two decades. He lives in New York City.