Friday Launch Party Keynote Author
Nicola Yoon, One of Our Kind
Friday Evening Launch Party – BUY TICKETS
Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Instructions for Dancing; Everything, Everything; and The Sun Is Also a Star, and is a coauthor of Blackout.
For fans of The Sellout and The Other Black Girl, Yoon’s much-anticipated entry into adult literary fiction is a propulsive, daring satire of race and privilege set in an all-Black gated community. A gripping thriller with wry, razor-sharp social commentary, One of Our Kind explores the ways in which freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other.
Nicola Yoon is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Award recipient, a Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, and the first Black woman to hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult best-seller list. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She’s also the co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.
Nicola will be in conversation with Chasity Malatesta, an African-American educator, facilitator, and equity advocate based on Bainbridge Island. The Launch Party starts at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4. Get your tickets today.
Festival Saturday Authors
Festival Saturday authors are free and open to all. Sessions run 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Venues are the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (auditorium), the Bainbridge Island Senior/Community Center, and the Stan Pocock Legacy Rowing Center.
Festival Saturday
Chelsea Bieker, Madwoman
Session: “The Mother Lode,” Chelsea Bieker and Kimberly King Parsons, 10 a.m., Rowing Center.
Moderator: Megan Chance, A Dangerous Education
Madwoman is a gripping portrait of motherhood and motherloss, intimate terrorism and terrifying love, the reverberations of male violence through generations, and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive. Chelsea Bieker‘s debut novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month, and was a national indie bestseller. Her story collection, Heartbroke, won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Bieker received a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.
Festival Saturday
Laurel Braitman, What Looks Like Bravery
Session: “Women Behaving Bravely,” Laurel Braitman and Caroline Paul, 1 p.m., Rowing Center.
Laurel Braitman is a bestselling author, speaker, educator and trailblazer in the field of medical storytelling. What Looks Like Bravery is a true story about the ways loss can transform us into the people we want to become. Braitman is the Director of Writing and Storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine. Her other works include the popular science book Animal Madness: Inside their minds. She is the founder of Writing Medicine, a global community of writing healthcare professionals. Her work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Good Morning America and Al Jazeera. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, on Radiolab, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic and other publications. Braitman lives on her family’s citrus and avocado ranch in Southern California.
Festival Saturday
Johnny Compton, Devils Kill Devils
Session: “Chills and Thrills (and Talking Cats),” Johnny Compton and John Scalzi, 11:30 a.m., Rowing Center. Moderator: Luciano Marano, Hidebound
Devils Kill Devils is perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things and Southern gothic horror. Johnny Compton brings his trademark terror and dread that readers fell in love with in The Spite House to a new roster of monsters—angels, devils, vampires—and a heart-pounding race to save the world. Compton is a Stoker Award-nominated, San Antonio-based author whose short stories have appeared in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast and several other publications. His fascination with frightening fiction started when he was introduced to the ghost story “The Golden Arm” as a child.
Festival Saturday
Sloane Crosley, Grief is for People
In conversation with Jonathan Mooallem, Serious Face, 2:30, Rowing Center
Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling books How Did You Get This Number and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). Grief is for People, her new memoir, has been described as “[An] aching meditation on loss and friendship…This is a must-read” (Publishers Weekly). Crosley is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp, both of which she has adapted for film.
Festival Saturday
Jonathan Evison, Again and Again
Session: “We Contain Multitudes,” Jonathan Evison and Laurie Frankel, 4:15, Senior Center.
Moderator: Jim Thomsen, Jim Thomsen Creative
From one of America’s greatest, most creative novelists comes Again and Again, a poignant and endlessly surprising story about love lost, found, and redeemed. Jonathan Evison is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Small World; All About Lulu; West of Here; The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving; This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!; Lawn Boy; and Legends of the North Cascades. He lives with his wife and family in Washington state.
Festival Saturday
Laurie Frankel, Family Family
Session: “We Contain Multitudes,” Jonathan Evison and Laurie Frankel, 4:15, Senior Center.
Moderator: Jim Thomsen, Jim Thomsen Creative
“Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?” Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of five 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 25 languages and been optioned for film and TV. She lives in Seattle with her family, and makes good soup.
Festival Saturday
Diana Helmuth, The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft
Session: “Infiltrating the Hive,” Diana Helmuth and Jane Marie, 1:15, Senior Center.
Moderator: Erica Berry, Wolfish
A skeptic spends a year trying to find spiritual fulfillment by practicing modern Witchcraft in this fascinating memoir that’s perfect for fans of A.J. Jacobs and Mary Roach. Diana Helmuth writes about urges: to travel, to be in nature, and to feel understood. Her first book, How to Suffer Outside, was a National Outdoor Book Award winner, and her freelance work can be found in various anthologies, travel guides, and humor magazines. She can often be caught moonlighting in Silicon Valley’s start-up land, or producing the occasional podcast. The Witching Year was featured on All Things Considered and reviewed in The New York Times.
Festival Saturday
Sonora Jha, The Laughter
Session: “These American Lives,” Sonora Jha and Rachel Khong, 2:45, Senior Center.
Moderator: Victoria Irwin, retired journalist
Sonora Jha is the author of three books, the latest of which is the novel The Laughter, which won the 2024 Washington Book Award for Fiction and was named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others. The Laughter has been described by The New York Times as “a no holds barred comic achievement” and by Booklist as “a complete triumph.” It also won the AutHer Prize for Fiction and was long-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Sonora moved to the U.S. to earn a PhD in Political Communication and is now a professor and associate dean at Seattle University. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Playa Summer Lake, Richard Hugo House, and Residency L’Ancienne Auberge in France.
Festival Saturday
Rachel Khong, Real Americans
Session: “These American Lives,” Sonora Jha and Rachel Khong, 2:45, Senior Center.
Moderator: Victoria Irwin, retired journalist
How far would you go to shape your own destiny? Rachel Khong‘s Real Americans is an exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? Published in April, Real Americans was an instant New York Times bestseller. Khong’s debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, received the California Book Award for First Fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California.
Festival Saturday
Rachel Linden, Recipe for a Charmed Life
Session: “Love Stories and Life Lessons,” Rachel Linden and Susan Wiggs, 1 p.m., Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium.
Moderator: Jennifer Longo, What I Carry
After a day of unrivaled disappointments, a promising young chef in Paris finds every bite of food suddenly tastes bitter. To save her career, she travels to the Pacific Northwest to reconnect with her estranged mom, and discovers a delicious family legacy she never suspected. Rachel Linden is the bestselling author of five other novels including The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie and The Enlightenment of Bees. She is also an international aid worker and lives with her family on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where she enjoys creating stories about hope, courage, and connection, with a hint of romance and a touch of whimsy.
Festival Saturday
Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe
Session: “The Mother Lode,” Chelsea Bieker and Kimberly King Parsons, 10 a.m., Rowing Center. Moderator: Megan Chance, A Dangerous Education
Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the national bestselling novel We Were the Universe, a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief’s dismantling power.” Parsons’s story collection, Black Light, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner and children.
Festival Saturday
Caroline Paul, Tough Broad
Session: “Women Behaving Bravely,” Laurel Braitman and Caroline Paul, 1 p.m., Rowing Center.
Caroline Paul is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure; You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World; and Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, as well as the memoir Fighting Fire, about becoming one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco, and the novel East Wind, Rain. She is a longtime member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
Festival Saturday
John Scalzi, Starter Villain
Session: “Chills and Thrills (and Talking Cats),” Johnny Compton and John Scalzi, 11:30 a.m., Rowing Center. Moderator: Luciano Marano, Hidebound
Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place. John Scalzi, author of Starter Villain, is one of the most popular SF authors of his generation. His debut, Old Man’s War, won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel), The Last Emperox, and 2022’s The Kaiju Preservation Society. Material from his blog, Whatever, has earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
Festival Saturday
Tanmeet Sethi, MD, Joy is My Justice
In conversation with Jim Albert, Eagle Harbor Book Company, 11:45, Senior Center
Joy Is My Justice is a radical guide to Joy as a path to liberation in your body, where the truest justice has always lived. Tanmeet Sethi, MD, is a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines practicing primary care, working in global trauma, and community activism. She is a highly sought-after speaker, and her TEDx talk offers a radical way to practice gratitude. She lives in Seattle with her family.
Festival Saturday
Randall Sullivan, Graveyard of the Pacific
In conversation with Bruce Barcott, The Measure of a Mountain, 10 a.m., Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium
Graveyard of the Pacific is a vivid portrait of the Columbia River Bar that combines maritime history, adventure journalism, and memoir, bringing alive the history—and present—of one of the most notorious stretches of water in the world. Randall Sullivan was a contributing editor to Rolling Stone for over 20 years. He is the author of Dead Wrong, The Price of Experience, LAbyrinth, The Miracle Detective, and Untouchable. His work has been published in, among many other places, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Journal, Washington Post, and the Guardian. He lives in Oregon.
Festival Saturday
Sophie Sullivan, Can’t Help Falling in Love
Session: “Seduced With Stories,” Neely Tubati Alexander, Sophie Sullivan, and Rebecca Thorne, 11:30, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium.
Moderator: Lily Taliaferro, Eagle Harbor Book Co.
In Can’t Help Falling in Love, a struggling waitress and the heir to a major Seattle company stumble into a high-profile fake engagement while simultaneously trying to keep up with their own love lives in this flirty fall rom-com! Sophie Sullivan (she/her) is a Canadian author who writes around her day job as a teacher and spends her spare time with her sweet family watching reruns of Friends. She has written Ten Rules for Faking It and How to Love Your Neighbor, and has had plenty of practice writing happily ever after as her alter ego, Jody Holford.
Festival Saturday
Michela Tartaglia, Pasta for All Seasons
In conversation with Jonathan Mooallem, Serious Face, 10:15, Senior Center
Rising Seattle chef Michela Tartaglia has developed 50 seasonal recipes that showcase the best of Northwest seafood, produce, and meat in creative, deeply satisfying pasta dishes. Tartaglia is an Italian native, born in the province of Turin, Piedmont. Her passion for linguistics and languages is captured in her first book, Una Mela al Giorno, published in Italy by Nomos Edizioni. She cofounded Pasta Casalinga, an intimate lunch spot in the heart of Pike Place Market. Since its opening in 2018, it’s become a destination for locals and visitors alike.
Festival Saturday
Rebecca Thorne, A Pirate’s Life for Tea
Session: “Seduced With Stories,” Neely Tubati Alexander, Sophie Sullivan, and Rebecca Thorne, 11:30, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium. Moderator: Lily Taliaferro, Eagle Harbor Book Co.
Bookshops & Bonedust meets Our Flag Means Death in this cozy fantasy on the low seas, where lesbian pirates find out if enemies actually can become lovers! Rebecca Thorne is a USA Today, Indie, and Sunday Times bestselling author, specializing in all things fantasy, sci-fi, and romantic. When she isn’t writing (or avoiding writing), she’s either working as a flight attendant or hiking with her dogs and fiancée. Rebecca has an MFA from Emerson College and aspires to be a professor someday. She dedicates a large portion of her platform to writing and publishing education.
Festival Saturday
Neely Tubati-Alexander, In a Not So Perfect World
Session: “Seduced With Stories,” Neely Tubati Alexander, Sophie Sullivan, and Rebecca Thorne, 11:30, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium.
Moderator: Lily Taliaferro, Eagle Harbor Book Co.
The author of Love Buzz follows her acclaimed first novel with a delightful Caribbean-set romp about an ambitious designer of apocalyptic video games with a strategy for (almost) everything who discovers what happens when her best-laid plans go off course. Neely Tubati Alexander is originally from the Seattle area and resides in Arizona with her husband and children. Her debut novel, Love Buzz, won the Zibby Award for Best Beach Read and was hailed by Good Morning America as “the perfect escapist read . . . absolutely delightful,” and Booklist declared her “an exciting new romance writer.”
Festival Saturday
Susan Wiggs, Welcome to Beach Town
Session: “Love Stories and Life Lessons,” Rachel Linden and Susan Wiggs, 1 p.m., Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Auditorium.
Moderator: Jennifer Longo, What I Carry
Susan Wiggs is the author of more than 50 novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and the recent New York Times bestsellers The Lost and Found Bookshop, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, and Family Tree. Her latest novel, Welcome to Beach Town, is set in an idyllic California beach town where residents are forced to reckon with scandal after a high school valedictorian’s speech reveals shocking secrets, shaking the town to its very core. Wiggs lives with her husband on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.
