Meet Our 2023 Authors

Terry Brooks

A writer since the age of ten, Terry Brooks published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977.  He has written over forty bestselling novels, as well as adaptations of the movies Hook and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and a memoir on his writing life titled Sometimes The Magic Works.  He has sold over fifty million copies of his books domestically and is published worldwide.  Seasons One and Two of The Shannara Chronicles TV series aired in January 2016 & 2017.  His current novels, Child of Light and Daughter of Darkness published in October 2021 and 2022.  The third book in the series will publish in 2023.  The author lives with his wife Judine in the Pacific Northwest.
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 was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ 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 was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, was released in July, 2021 and won the Giller Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was also named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and several other publications.

Lyanda Haupt

Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning author, naturalist, ecophilosopher, and speaker whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and the wild, natural world. Her newest book is Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, winner of the Nautilus Book Award Grand Prize. Other books include  Mozart’s Starling, The Urban Bestiary, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. She is a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, a two-time winner of the Washington State Book Award, and finalist for the Orion Book Award. Lyanda is an Audubon Master Birder, 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 West Seattle where she wanders the urban woodlands and knits magical hats.

Elise Hooper

A native New Englander, Elise Hooper spent several years writing for television and online news outlets before getting a MA and teaching high-school literature and history. Her debut novel The Other Alcott was a nominee for the 2017 Washington Book Award. Three more novels--Learning to See, Fast Girls, and Angels of the Pacific—followed, all centered on the lives of extraordinary but overlooked historical women. The artists, trailblazing athletes, and resilient U.S. Army nurses who populate Elise’s novels can help us better understand the past and draw important connections to our own times. Elise now lives in Seattle with her husband and two teenage daughters. ​

Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author and (semi) fearless immersion reporter 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 eleven works of narrative nonfiction, including her most-recent, Free: Two Years, Six Lives and the Long Journey Home, which chronicles the rocky road of reentry from long-time incarceration. Her previous book, A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life, was based on more than three years of running a writers’ group for men serving life sentences in a maximum security prison. Other works include   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 continues to teach writing workshops to European journalists for the Vienna-based non-profit forum for Journalism and Media. In the winters she teaches Storytelling for Social Change at the University of Washington.
​www.laurenkessler.com