Book Signing Info: TBA

Image Credit: Colson Whitehead © Chris Close

Author Bio:
Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize), The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. He was named New York’s 11th State Author in 2018. His most recent book, New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys, was published in May 2019 and was one of TIME Magazine’s ten best fiction books of the decade, winner of the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the National Book Award.

Colson Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for John Henry Days.

He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming. He lives in New York City.

For more information on this speaker, please visit www.prhspeakers.com.

Book Signing Info: TBA

Author Bio:
Ann M. Martin is the bestselling author of the momentous series The Baby-sitters Club, as well as the Main Street series. Her other acclaimed novels include Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life, Everything for a Dog, Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure, A Dog's Life, Belle Teal, Here Today, and the Newbery Honor Book A Corner of the Universe. Ann M. Martin grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and always enjoyed writing even before she was old enough to write. She would dictate stories to her mother to write them down for her.

After graduating from Smith College, she became a teacher, and then an editor of children’s books before becoming a full-time writer. With 176 million copies sold to date, The Baby-sitters Club made her a household name. By the time the series ended in 2000, there were over 176,000,000 books in print from the original Baby-sitters Club and spinoff series, The Baby-sitter's Little Sister. In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann wrote the acclaimed novels-in-letters, P.S. Longer Letter Later and Snail Mail No More, with author Paula Danziger. She also co-wrote The Doll People books with Laura Godwin, illustrated by Brian Selznick. Her novel A Dog’s Life: The Autobiography of a Stray was a winner of the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award.

Ann divides her time between New York City and upstate New York. She currently spends most of her time in her home in the Hudson Valley where she likes to write, go on long walks with her dog Sadie, watch old episodes of "I Love Lucy," and make clothes for children, her favorite hobby.

Book Signing Info: TBA

Author Bio:
Josh Malerman is the mastermind behind the 2018 hit Netflix thriller, Bird Box. He is an author of short stories and novels, and he is also the singer/songwriter of the Detroit rock band The High Strung.

While on tour with his band, Josh wrote novels in the passenger seat between cities. Bird Box wasn’t the first novel he wrote, but it was the first one published; it was published in 2014 to much critical acclaim. Author Hugh Howey calls Bird Box, “A book that demands to be read,” and Kirkus Reviews writes, “Malerman ... keeps us tinglingly on edge with his cool, merciless storytelling [and] douses his tale in poetic gloom ... an unsettling thriller.” In 2018, Netflix released a film adaptation of Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, and Trevante Rhodes. Josh is currently working on a follow-up to Bird Box entitled Malorie: A Bird Box Novel, to be published this year.

His other novels include Unbury Carol, Goblin, On This, The Day of the Pig, Black Mad Wheel, A House at the Bottom of a Lake, and his latest, Inspection. Josh’s writing has been compared to that of Stephen King and Jonathan Carroll, but with a voice uniquely his own. His books have been nominated for the Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the James Herbert Award.

Josh lives in Michigan with his fiancé, artist/musician, Allison Laakko. Aside from writing, he is currently working on a new album with his band.

Book Signing Info: TBA

Author Bio:
Douglas Preston is an author and journalist who has published thirty-five books, both nonfiction and fiction, the last twenty-eight of which have been New York Times bestsellers. His last nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God, was named a New York Times notable book, as well as a best book of the year by the Boston Globe, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and National Geographic. He also writes a series of suspense novels with Lincoln Child featuring FBI Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast, including The Relic, which was made into a film, and Crooked River.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Preston worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He writes about archaeology, anthropology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and other magazines. Long a supporter of our troops, he was part of the first group of authors in the history of the USO to tour a combat zone, in Iraq, where he and four fellow novelists encouraged soldiers to write about their experiences, and he has personally signed and given away thousands of books to wounded warriors. Preston currently serves as President of the Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest association of authors and journalists.

Learn more about Douglas Preston on his website.

Special thanks to the Kanawha Garden Club for helping
to bring this author to the 2020 West Virginia Book Festival.  

Book Signing Info: TBA

Author Bio:

Eric Eyre has been a reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail since 1998. In 2017, his investigation into massive shipments of opioids to West Virginia’s southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. The author of Death in Mud Lick, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife and son.

Book Signing Info: TBA

Author Bio:

Denise Giardina grew up in a coal camp in McDowell County, West Virginia. She is the author of six novels: Good King Harry, Storming Heaven, The Unquiet Earth, Saints and Villains, Fallam’s Secret, and Emily’s Ghost. Her journalism has appeared in The Nation, The Village Voice, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Giardina is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an American Book Award, the Lillian Smith Award, and the Boston Book Review’s Fisk Fiction Prize. She is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College and Virginia Theological Seminary and is a deacon in the Episcopal Church.

Heeding the Call by William Jolliff is a literary analysis of Giardina's novels and will be published in May by West Virginia University Press.