Laurie Frankel

Photo by Natalia Dotto

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of five (going on six)  novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.​

Claudia Rowe

Photo Courtesy of Meryl Schenker

Claudia Rowe has been writing about the places where youth and government policy clash for 34 years. Her newest book, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, is a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award in nonfiction. In 2018, Claudia’s memoir, The Spider and the Fly, won the Washington State Book Award. Claudia has also received a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and multiple honors for investigative reporting. Her work has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

Eileen Garvin

Born and raised in eastern Washington, Eileen Garvin lives in Hood River, Oregon. Her novels, The Music of Bees and Crow Talk, are national bestsellers. 
The Music of Bees was named a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a Good Housekeeping Book club Pick, a People Magazine Best New Book, an IndieNext Pick, a Library Reads Pick, a Christian Science Monitor Pick, a Washington Post Best Summer Reads, and named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by BookRiot, Bookish, Nerd Daily, The Tempest, Midwestness and others.
Crow Talk received wide acclaim and was chosen for The Literacy Project in Vail, Colorado, and other common reads programs. Eileen’s memoir, How to be a Sister, was named an Indie Next by IndieBound and was chosen as a Target Book of the Month and a Kindle Book of the Month. How to be a Sister was recently released in audiobook.
Her essays have appeared with Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Read Books, The Oregonian, PsychologyToday.com, and Creative Non-Fiction Magazine.
Eileen shares her backyard with four chickens, wild birds of all kinds, and about 120,000 honeybees.

Karen Russell

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!, one of the NYT’s ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the grateful recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the NYPL’s Young Lions Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” award, and was selected for Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list (She is now decisively over 40). She’s the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, and the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, among other honors. She has taught literature and creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California-Irvine, Williams College, Columbia University, and Bryn Mawr College, and was the Endowed Chair of Texas State’s MFA program. She serves on the board of Street Books. Born and raised in Miami, FL, she lives in Portland, OR with her husband, son, and daughter.