Meet Our 2020 Authors

Terry Brooks

​Terry Brooks has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from World Fantasy and is one of the biggest-selling writers of fantasy living today. He may be best known for his 26- book Shannara series. However, he also has written six volumes of the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, three in the Word and Void series, as well as a non-fiction book on writing, Sometimes the Magic Works. He also penned the novelization of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. In total he has thirty-five books in print, most of which have appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. Terry's newest book The Stiehl Assassin will be out May 28. The Shannara Chronicles, a TV series that completed its second season, is based on Terry’s books. Terry will serve as Master of Ceremonies and moderator Sunday morning for Get Lit.

Omar El Akkad

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and numerous other locations around the world. He is the recipient of a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and more than a dozen other publications. He is one of 25 writers featured in the new anthology of speculative fiction, “A People’s Future of the United States.” Omar lives in the woods just south of Portland, Oregon. 

Lyanda Haupt

Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning author, naturalist, ecophilosopher, and speaker whose writing is at the forefront of the movement to connect people with nature in their everyday lives. Her newest book is MOZART’S STARLING (Little Brown, 2017). Lyanda’s book, THE URBAN BESTIARY (Little, Brown in fall, 2013), was a finalist for the Orion Book Award; CROW PLANET (Little, Brown in July 2009), was the winner of the 2010 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award; and RARE ENCOUNTERS WITH ORDINARY BIRDS (Sasquatch), won the 2002 Washington State Book Award.
Lyanda has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and been a seabird researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Orion, Discover, Utne, LA Times, Image, Huffington Post, Wild Earth, and Conservation Biology Journal. She lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter, a mixed backyard chicken flock, and Carmen the starling, featured in her newest book.

Elise Hooper

Elise Hooper, a native New Englander, spent several years writing for television and online news outlets before getting a MA and teaching high-school literature and history. Her main characters tend to be based on the lives of real women who have been frequently overlooked in history books. Many of these women, like May Alcott and Dorothea Lange, can help us better understand the past and draw important connections to our own times. Her previous books are LEARNING TO SEE: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America, and THE OTHER ALCOTT: A novel.
In her new book, FAST GIRLS: A Novel, due out July 7, 2020, Elise explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women’s Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany. Elise and her family live in Seattle.

Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author who combines lively narrative with deep research to explore everything from the gritty world of a maximum security prison to the grueling world of professional ballet; from the wild, wild west of the anti-aging movement to the  hidden world of Alzheimer’s sufferers; from the stormy seas of the mother-daughter relationship to the full court press of women’s basketball. She is the author of ten works of narrative nonfiction, including A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life, based on more than three years of running a writers’ group for men serving life sentences in a maximum security prison. Her other work includes Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts and My Midlife Quest to Dance The Nutcracker; Counterclockwise: My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-Aging; My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence; Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose; Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig; and two biographies of ill-behaved women: Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club. She teaches workshops in nonfiction storytelling and storytelling for social change in the U.S. and Europe. She blogs at www.laurenchronicles.com.