Newburyport Literary Festival: A Celebration of Literature, Readers, and Writers
Newburyport Literary Festival: A Celebration of Literature, Readers, and Writers

2010 Fiction Participants

Listed in alphabetical order
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Steve AlmondSteve Almond

Making a Long Story (Very) Short: Readings from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM
Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life - Saturday 11:00 AM

Steve Almond is the author the story collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked). His new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, will be out in Spring 2010. He is also, crazily, self-publishing a book called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, which is composed of 30 short short stories, and 30 brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.

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Marie AranaMarie Arana

Marie Arana reads from Lima Nights - Saturday 1:00 PM

Marie Arana was born in Peru, moved to the United States at the age of 9, and completed her BA in Russian Language and Literature at Northwestern University, her MA in Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Hong Kong University, and a certificate of scholarship (Mandarin language) at Yale University in China. Arana is the author of a memoir about her bicultural childhood "American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood," which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award as well as the PEN/Memoir Award, and won the Books for a Better Life Award. Her most recent novel, published in January 2009, is "Lima Nights."

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Elizabeth BarrettElizabeth Barrett

A Sense of Place - Saturday 9:00 AM

Elizabeth Barrett worked as an editor for Bantam Books for fourteen years. She is now a freelance editor, teaches writing for adult education in Newburyport and Portsmouth, NH, and is a published author.

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Brunonia BarryBrunonia Barry

A Sense of Place - Saturday 9:00 AM

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain College in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. While still an undergraduate at UNH, Barry spent a year living in Dublin and auditing Trinity College classes on James Joyce's Ulysses. Barry's love of theater led to a first job in Chicago where she ran promotional campaigns for Second City, Ivanhoe, and Studebaker theaters. Several years ago, she wrote for the Beacon Street Girls, a fictional series of books for 'tweens. Happily married, Barry lives with her husband and her 14-year-old Golden Retriever named Byzantium. The Lace Reader, is her first original novel. Her second novel, The Map of True Places will be released on May 4, 2010.

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Jamie BrennerJamie Brenner

Knocking on Doors: The First-Time Novelist - Saturday 10:30 AM

Jamie Brenner has been an agent with Artists and Artisans since 2007. She came to the agency with a decade of experience in book publishing, including literary publicity (HarperCollins Publishers), and online bookselling. Jamie represents literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and YA. She is especially looking for stories that say something big about the world we live in, about relationships at crossroads, or dealing with monumental choices. For young adult novels, she likes stories set in unique worlds and/or exploring a crisis of faith or identity. You can visit her blog at www.girlmeetsbook.com.

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Stace BudzkoStace Budzko

Making a Long Story (Very) Short: Readings from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Stace Budzko has been anthologized and/or published in Night Train, The Collagist, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, Brevity & Echo, Quick Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, Long Story Short, Southeast Review, Carve Magazine and elsewhere. A native of Maine, he received an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. At present, he is a writing instructor at Emmanuel College and Grub Street as well as writer-in-residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

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Myfanwy CollinsMyfanwy Collins

Making a Long Story (Very) Short: Readings from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Myfanwy Collins has been published in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Quick Fiction, Mississippi Review, Cream City Review, Potomac Review, Jabberwock Review, Saranac Review and other venues. She also has work included in Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (2009) and the 2008 DZANC Books Best of the Web Anthology. She is a consulting editor at Narrative Magazine http://www.narrativemagazine.com. Please visit her web site at: http://www.myfanwycollins.com

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Joanne DobsonJoanne Dobson

Keeping Us In Suspense - Saturday 10:30 AM

Joanne Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series from Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press. She won an Agatha nomination for Quieter Than Sleep, the first book in the series. The novels have been widely reviewed, including in the New York Times, and in 2001 the adult- readers division of the New York Library Association named her Noted Author of the Year, as the writer whose books they most enjoyed recommending to their patrons. Joanne was an English Professor at Fordham University for many years, teaching literature and creative writing. Her scholarly research and writing focused on Emily Dickinson and on the popular fiction of 19th-century American women writers. She now writes full-time and is available to teach and speak at libraries, colleges, and other venues. www.joannedobson.com. Death Without Tenure, the forthcoming Professor Karen Pelletier novel will be published by Poisoned Pen Press. “A Good Cuppa Joe,” co-authored with Beverly Graves Myers, is forthcoming from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

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Richard DoetschRichard Doetsch

Richard Doetsch reads from The 13th Hour - Saturday 9:00 AM
Keeping Us In Suspense - Saturday 10:30 AM

While many authors choose to write about thrills, Richard Doetsch has lived his life experiencing them. He is a triathlete, expert skier, scuba diver, an erratic golfer, and an extreme sport enthusiast who has jumped off bridges, cliffs, and 200-foot cranes with rubber bands around his ankles, parachutes on his back, and sometimes just enjoying the 100-foot freefall into water with nothing to slow his descent. His first novel, The Thieves of Heaven was published in 2006 and has been optioned for a feature film. His latest novel, The 13th Hour has been described as a cross between "The Bourne Identity" and "The Time Traveler's Wife" and has been acquired by New Line Cinema. He has been married for 22 years to his childhood sweetheart, Virginia.

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Andre Dubus IIIAndre Dubus III

Opening Ceremony: The Writer’s Life
– Wally Lamb and Andre Dubus III in Conversation - Friday 6:00 PM
Andre Dubus III reads from Townie - Saturday 2:30 PM

Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog, and The Garden of Last Days, a New York Times bestseller. His memoir, Townie, is forthcoming in February 2011 with W.W. Norton & Co. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. An Academy Award-nominated motion picture and published in twenty languages, his novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. A member of PEN American Center, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Book Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell where is a full-time faculty member. He is married to performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.

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Susanne DunlapSusanne Dunlap

Susanna Dunlap reads from Anastasia’s Secret - Saturday 1:00 PM
Getting Hooked on History - Saturday 2:30 PM

Susanne Dunlap has written historical fiction for both adults and teens. Her teen book, The Musician's Daughter, was chosen as a selection by the Junior Library Guild and is a finalist in the Missouri Gateway Reader's Prize. Her latest historical novel for teens is Anastasia's Secret, called by Publisher's Weekly "a magnetic reimagining" of the life of grand duchess Anastasia as a teen during the days of World War I and the Russian Revolution. Dunlap is a graduate of Smith College and earned a PhD in Music History from Yale, and divides her time between Brooklyn and Northampton, MA.

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Anne Easter SmithAnne Easter Smith

Queen By Right: Anne Easter Smith reads from her upcoming novel
- Saturday 10:00 AM
Getting Hooked on History - Saturday 2:30 PM

Anne Easter Smith is a native of England who has lived in the US for 42 years. Her love of English history led to her new career as an historical novelist when her first book, A Rose for the Crown, was accepted for publication by Simon & Schuster in 2006. Two more books in the series about the York family in the Wars of the Roses (Daughter of York and The King's Grace) have since been published, and her fourth (and as yet untitled) is a fictional biography of Cecily Neville, the matriarch of the house of York and is now in the editing stages. Anne began her writing career as a freelancer for a small monthly publication in Plattsburgh, NY in the early 1980s and then became the Features Editor of the daily newspaper there for ten years. Anne and her husband, Scott, have called the Newburyport area home since 1999. She is pleased to be part of the festival again this year. www.anneeastersmith.com

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Aine GreaneyÁine Greaney

A Sense of Place - Saturday 9:00 AM

Born and brought up in Co. Mayo, Ireland, Áine Greaney now lives and writes in Newburyport, 30 miles north of Boston. She travels home to Ireland frequently. Among her short-story awards are the 2002 Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Irish News Short Fiction Award, the Moore Historical and Writing Award and the 2006 Flume Press Fiction Chapbook Award (Cal. State Chico). Shortlists include The Fish Anthology, the Hennessy Award, the Steinbeck Award and the Seacoast Writers Award for personal essay. A regular public speaker and panelist, Greaney has presented at many facilities in Ireland and the U.S., including the Irish Studies Lecture Series at the University of North Florida, the International Writers Series at the University of Missouri, the American Irish Historical Society, New York, and the Ballinrobe Library, County Mayo. Áine is currently working on her third novel, Married for Money, set in upstate New York and County Mayo and The Muse in the Cube: Creative Writing for 9-5 Employees (Writers Digest Books, 2011).

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Dyke HendricksonDyke Hendrickson

Keeping Us In Suspense - Saturday 10:30 AM

Career-journalist Dyke Hendrickson has been a writer and/or editor with the Portland Press Herald, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Boston Herald. He is the author of three books: a novel, "Last Night in Hollywood" (New Sharon Press, Portland, 2004), and two histories, "Quiet Presence: Stories of Franco-Americans in New England" (Gannett Press, Portland, 1980), and "Franco-Americans of Maine," (Arcadia Press, Portsmouth, 2010) which is due in stores on June 20.

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Leslie HendricksonLeslie Hendrickson

The Resilience of Women - Saturday 1:00 PM

Leslie Hendrickson is a New York City-based writer whose work has appeared in amNewYork, FamilyCircle, NewYork.com, Jane, and the New York Sun. She graduated from St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M., and Columbia University's Journalism School. Leslie has completed three triathlons, but has yet to finish Moby Dick.
www.thegreatleslie.com

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Kelly HoranKelly Horan

Opening Ceremony: The Writer’s Life
– Wally Lamb and Andre Dubus III in Conversation - Friday 6:00 PM

Kelly Horan is a Boston-based freelance journalist and public radio producer who has contributed to Salon.com, the Boston Globe, Yankee magazine, Gastronomica, NPR’s Living on Earth, NHPR’s Word of Mouth and WBUR’s Morning Edition. She is a freelance producer for the National Public Radio program On Point and the Terrascope Youth Radio program at M.I.T. Kelly was a 2006-2007 Wellesley College Stevens Fellow in Paris and a 2004-2005 Japan Society Journalism Fellow in Japan. She is at work on a biography of a 19th century femme fatale whose flair for the shocking would put Lady Gaga to shame.

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Wally LambWally Lamb

Opening Ceremony: The Writer’s Life
– Wally Lamb and Andre Dubus III in Conversation - Friday 6:00 PM
Wally Lamb reads from The Hour I First Believed - Saturday 9:00 AM

Wally Lamb is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels—The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, and She’s Come Undone—of which two were Oprah’s Book Club selections. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for the past ten years. His new novel, Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story was published in November of 2009. He is currently at work on his fifth novel, tentatively titled We Are Water. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine. The Lambs are the parents of three sons.

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Alan LightmanAlan Lightman

Alan Lightman Reads - Saturday 4:00 PM

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. He was educated at Princeton University and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. Lightman is the author of five novels, two collections of essays, a book-length narrative poem, and several books on science. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into 30 languages. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in fiction. Lightman’s most recent book is Song of Two Worlds, a narrative poem. Lightman is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and won the 1996 Andrew Gemant Award of the American Institute of Physics for linking science and the humanities. Lightman is also the founding director of the Harpswell Foundation, which works to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia. For more information about Alan Lightman, see www.alanlightman.com.

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Nancy MauroNancy Mauro

Knocking on Doors: The First-Time Novelist - Saturday 10:30 AM

Nancy Mauro lives in New York City. She has worked as a creative director and copywriter in both Canadian and American advertising agencies. In 2009, Random House/Shaye Areheart Books published her debut novel, New World Monkeys, which was named one of the Best Books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly. It received starred reviews in Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and has been featured in the New York Times Book Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal’s Culture Blog, Speakeasy. Nancy is at work on her second novel. Visit nancymauro.com.

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Tara MasihTara L. Masih

Making a Long Story (Very) Short: Readings from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM
Tara Masih reads from Where the Dog Star Never Glows - Saturday 2:30 PM

Tara L. Masih received an MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. Her debut story collection is Where the Dog Star Never Glows (Press 53), and she is editor of the acclaimed Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (2009), which has been recently nominated for the Foreword Book of the Year Award. She has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines (such as Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Red River Review, Night Train, and The Caribbean Writer), and her essays have been read on NPR. Several limited edition illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction have been published by The Feral Press, along with poet’s farthing cards. Awards for her work include first place in The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest, second place in Jane’s Stories Flash Fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She judges the intercultural essay prize for the annual Soul-Making Literary Contest. She now works as a freelance book editor in Andover, Massachusetts. www.taramasih.com

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Mary McGarry MorrisMary McGarry Morris

The Resilience of Women - Saturday 1:00 PM

Mary McGarry Morris' first novel Vanished was published in 1988 and was nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman was published in 1991 and was chosen by Time magazine as one of the "Five Best Novels of the Year."  Her 1995 novel, Songs in Ordinary Times, was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection propelling it to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers List. Raised in Vermont, Mary currently lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Her most recent novel is The Last Secret.

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Pamela PainterPamela Painter

Making a Long Story (Very) Short: Readings from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction - Saturday 9:00 AM

Pamela Painter is the author of two story collections, Getting to Know the Weather, which won the GLCA Award for First Fiction and was reprinted as a Classic Contemporary by Carnegie Mellon, and The Long and Short of It. She is also the co-author of What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, now in its third edition. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Ploughshares. Her short short stories have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, and Quick Fiction, among others and in numerous short short story anthologies, such as Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, MicroFiction Sudden Stories, and You Have Time for This. She has received grants from The Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, has won three Pushcart Prizes and Agni Review’s The John Cheever Award for Fiction. Painter’s collection of short short stories, Wouldn’t You Like to Know, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon in 2010. Painter lives in Boston and teaches in the Writing, Literature and Publishing Program at Emerson College.

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Mary SchaeferMary Schaefer

Getting Hooked on History - Saturday 2:30 PM

Mary Schaefer is a strategist, writer and speaker who has served in multiple leadership roles in academia, business, non-profit and community organizations. Most recently, she was executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, where she engaged faculty, global executives and leadership experts in developing and delivering up to 60 innovative leadership programs a year for students across MIT and alumni around the world. She spent 12 years at MIT, serving also as director of communications for the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her previous lives include serving as an award-winning corporate communicator and journalist, executive consultant and speechwriter, fund-raiser, community organizer and entrepreneur. She currently is a free-lance writer and speaker, and whenever possible, reader of historical novels.

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Anita ShreveAnita Shreve

Closing Ceremony Honoring The Writer’s Life - Saturday 7:00 PM

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, the eldest of three daughters. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 12 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and Body Surfing. In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot's Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters. Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13. She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

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J. Courtney SullivanJ. Courtney Sullivan

Knocking on Doors: The First-Time Novelist - Saturday 10:30 AM

J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the bestselling novel Commencement, which the New York Times called "one of this year's most inviting summer novels". Courtney is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Allure, In Style, Men’s Vogue, the New York Observer, Tango, and in the essay anthology The Secret Currency of Love (Morrow.) She contributes to the website: someecards.com, and is co-editing an anthology about young women and feminism with Courtney E. Martin. She is a graduate of Smith College, and works in the editorial department of the New York Times. Read more about her at www.jcourtneysullivan.com

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Beth WelchBeth Welch

The Enduring Marquand - Saturday 9:00 AM

Executive Editor for History at the college publishing house, Bedford/St. Martin's, Beth Welch has deep ties to Newburyport on both sides of her family. She recently led a book group on the works of her grandfather John P. Marquand, the best-selling American novelist of the 1930s-1950s who will be honored at this year's literary festival.

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