2025 Festival Authors

Lauren Blakely

You can find Lauren Blakely on TikTok at @laurenblakelybooks! A #1 New York Times Bestselling, #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling, and #1 Audible Bestselling author, Lauren Blakely is known for her contemporary romance style that’s sexy, feel-good and witty. Lauren likes dogs, cake and show tunes and she is the vegetarian at your dinner party.

Michael Bourne

Michael Bourne is the author of We Bring You an Hour of Darkness, due out from DoppelHouse Press in October 2025.

He is also the author of the novel Blithedale Canyon (Regal House, 2022) and has published many stories in literary magazines, including december and Tin House. He is a long-time contributing editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, and he has written for the New York Times, the Globe & Mail, The Economist, Literary Hub, and Salon.

He grew up in Northern California and now lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he teaches writing at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Megan Chance

Megan Chance is the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of several novels. Her books have been picks for Amazon Book of the Month, IndieNext, and the Historical Novel Society Editors’ Choice. Booklist calls her writing “provocative and haunting.” Megan Chance lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Renee Erickson

Renee Erickson is the James Beard Award–winning chef and co-owner of numerous Seattle restaurants, including The Walrus and the Carpenter, The Whale Wins, and Bateau. She is the author of A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus: Menus and Stories.

Renee graduated from the University of Washington with a BFA in painting and printmaking and currently serves on the board at UW’s School of Art + Art History + Design. She lives in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood with her husband Dan, KittyB, and her pooch Bowie.

Jonathan Evison

Jonathan Evison is the author of the novels 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.

Julie Farley

Julie Farley loves writing books filled with big families, lots of heart, and plenty of laughs. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and four amazing kids. Julie is co-founder of the boutique publishing company, Fog House Press. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a graduate degree from DePaul University. When she’s not busy with her family or writing books, you’ll find her volunteering at school, hanging out in the Pilates studio, or watching reality TV…of any sort!

Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George is the New York Times and internationally best selling author of twenty British crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his unconventional partner Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. Her crime novels have been translated into 30 languages and featured on television by the BBC. She is also the author of a young adult series set on the island where she lives in the state of Washington.

She is the recipient of the Anthony Award, the Agatha Award, France’s Grand Prix di Literatture Policiere, and Germany’s MIMI. She has twice been nominated for an Edgar Award, and she is the recipient of an honorary doctorate of humane letters from California State University Fullerton, and an honorary MFA from Northwest Institute of Language Arts (Whidbey Island MFA Program).

David Guterson

David Guterson is the author of several novels: the national best seller Snow Falling on Cedars; East of the Mountains; Our Lady of the Forest, a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; The Other; and Ed King. He is also the author of two story collections, two books of poetry, a memoir, and the work of nonfiction Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Washington state.

Sonora Jha

Sonora Jha is the author of three books, most recently the novel The Laughter, which won the 2024 Washington State Book Award for Fiction and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others. It also won the AutHer Award for Fiction and was long listed for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her memoir, How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021) has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Her debut novel, Foreign (2013) was a finalist for the Shakti Bhatt Prize and the Hindu Prize and was long listed for the DSC Prize. After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Dr. Jha is now a professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. Her new novel, Intemperance, is forthcoming from Harper Via in October 2025.

Thomas Kohnstamm

Thomas Kohnstamm is the author of three books, including his new novel Supersonic, named one of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Literary Fiction titles for Spring 2025. A Sundance Fellow, his previous works have been translated into multiple languages and optioned by Showtime and Vice.

For more than two decades, Kohnstamm has worked as a freelance writer, translator, and video producer, covering everything from rainforest conservation and quantum computing to backcountry skiing. He lives in his hometown of Seattle.

Supersonic is his third book.

Rachel Linden

Rachel Linden is a novelist and international aid worker whose adventures in more than fifty countries around the world provide excellent grist for her writing. She is the author of Recipe for a Charmed Life, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie, Ascension of Larks, Becoming the Talbot Sisters, and The Enlightenment of Bees. Currently, Rachel lives with her family on a sweet little 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

Morgan Lockhart

Morgan Lockhart hails from the Pacific Northwest, where she currently lives with her family, including her partner, two children, and a pack of fur babies. Growing up in the woods of Washington State, Morgan has always been telling and consuming stories in all shapes and sizes. She roamed her way to California, where she graduated with highest honors from the creative writing department at UC San Diego. Her path forked into video games then, as she put off her final trimester of college to work on her first video game. A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart is her first novel.

Moira Macdonald

Moira Macdonald has been an arts critic at The Seattle Times since 2001, writing about movies, books, dance, television and fashion. Her debut novel, “Storybook Ending,” came out in May 2025 from Dutton Books/Penguin Random House, and is being published around the world, in 18 different languages.

Heather McBreen

Heather McBreen currently lives in Seattle, WA, but spent the best year of her life living in London where she completed an MA degree in arts and cultural management. When she’s not writing or reading books about kissing, she can be found surfing the web for travel deals and plotting her next adventure. Wedding Dashers is her debut novel.

Kevin O’Brien

Kevin O’Brien is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over twenty suspense novels. Before his books landed him on the bestseller lists, he was a railroad inspector who wrote at night. He moved from the train tracks to becoming a full-time author in 1997, when his novel, Only Son, was picked up by Reader’s Digest and optioned for film. Since then, his books have been translated into fourteen languages. Born and raised in Chicago, O’Brien now lives in Seattle, where he is on the board of Seattle 7 Writers, a collective of bestselling, award-winning authors. He can be found online at KevinOBrienBooks.com.

Shobha Rao

Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of An Unrestored Woman, a short story collection, and the novels Indian Country and Girls Burn Brighter. Rao is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. Girls Burn Brighter was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards. She lives in San Francisco.

Claudia Rowe

Claudia Rowe has been writing about the places where youth and government policy clash for 34 years. She is the recipient of a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and multiple honors for investigative reporting. Her work has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Claudia has been published in The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Mother Jones, and The Stranger. In 2018, Claudia’s memoir, The Spider and the Fly, won the Washington State Book Award.

Matthew Sullivan

Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of the novel Elita (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press, 2025) and the forthcoming short story collection Outer Stars, which won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and will be released in the fall of 2025. Her three previous collections of short fiction are What We Do With the Wreckage (2017 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction winner, University of Georgia Press in October, 2018), This Life She’s Chosen (2005, Chronicle Books) and Swimming With Strangers (2008, Chronicle Books). Kirsten has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and fellowships from MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the 2016 Jack Straw Writers Program. She teaches creative writing and literature and lives with her family near Seattle, Washington.

Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received support from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Kundiman, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle.

Coll Thrush

Coll Thrush is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and the founding co-editor of the Indigenous Confluences book series at the University of Washington Press. He is the author of Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific, as well as Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place and Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire.

Ijeoma Oluo

Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker and internet yeller. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, and most recently National Bestseller BE A REVOLUTION: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World – and How You Can, Too. Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100. She received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Christina Wood

Christina Wood is a self-taught baker and the founder, chef and owner of Temple Pastries in Seattle, WA.  She began baking in her home kitchen in 2010, started baking professionally in 2015, and opened Temple Pastries in 2020.  Her love of pastry and bread comes from a deep commitment to perfecting foundational techniques and the freedom that it gives to be creative. 

Leni Zumas

Leni Zumas was a finalist for the 2021 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Her bestselling novel Red Clocks won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Neukom Award for Speculative Fiction. The novel was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and was named a Best Book of 2018 by The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and the New York Public Library. Vulture called it one of the “100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century So Far.” Zumas’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Guernica, The Cut, Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives in Oregon and teaches in the creative writing program at Portland State University.