Authors

Zain Saeed earned his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin. His debut novel, Little America, was published by Penguin Random House India in June 2021 and won the top prize at the 2022 Karachi Literary Festival. His work has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Hindu, and The Freiburg Review, among others. He lives in Karachi, Pakistan, where he teaches creative writing and literature at Habib University.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Maya Rodale began reading romance novels in college at her mother’s insistence. She is now the bestselling and award-winning author of funny, feminist fiction. A champion of the romance genre and its readers, she is also the author of the non-fiction book Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained. Maya has also contributed to NPR Books, Bustle and The Huffington Post. She lives in New York City.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Putsata Reang is an author and journalist whose writings have appeared in a variety of national and international publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Ms, The Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News.

Putsata was born in Cambodia, and raised in rural Oregon. She has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, including Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand. She is an alum of Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies. She is a 2019 Jack Straw fellow. In 2005, she received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship that took her back to Cambodia to report on landless farmers.

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Wench. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight “Olive Titles,” limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston. Dolen received a DC Commission on the Arts Grant for her second novel Balm, which was published by HarperCollins in 2015. In 2013, Dolen wrote the introduction to a special edition of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, published by Simon & Schuster, which became a New York Times bestseller. She followed that with an introduction to Elizabeth Keckly’s Behind the Scenes, published in 2016. Dolen is a 2020 nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship. Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Mindy Mejia’s internationally acclaimed thrillers have been translated into over twenty languages. Her books have been picked for People’s Best New Books and listed in The Wall Street Journal’s Best New Mysteries. A CPA and graduate of the Hamline University MFA program, she lives and works in the Twin Cities.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Deborah Lawrenson spent her childhood moving around the world with diplomatic service parents, from Kuwait to China, Belgium, Luxembourg and Singapore. She read English at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist in London. She has written eight novels and her writing is praised for its vivid sense of place. The Art of Falling was a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick in 2005. The Lantern was published to critical acclaim in the USA, chosen for the Channel4 TV Book Club in the UK and shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year 2012. Her novel 300 Days of Sun, which is set in Portugal, was selected as a Great Group Read for the WNBA National Reading Group Month in October 2016 in the USA. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. With her husband Robert Rees, she is the co-author (as Serena Kent) of the Penelope Kite mystery series set in Provence.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Tracey was born and raised in New York City. She headed west for college and graduated from the University of New Mexico before owning and operating a behavioral healthcare company in the Pacific Northwest with her husband for fifteen years. Tracey currently lives in Bend, Oregon with her husband and two sons.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot. 

The daughter of a journalist, Elsa Hart was born in Rome and spent much of her childhood abroad, attending international schools in Moscow and Prague. She is drawn to stories about travelers throughout history, and likes to put her own characters in places that are unfamiliar to them. Her first three mysteries, Jade Dragon Mountain, The White Mirror, and City of Ink,  follow the exploits of a crime-solving librarian in 18th-century China. Her fourth novel, The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, introduces Cecily Kay, an 18th-century plant enthusiast whose fascination with botany leads her into a world of collectors, apothecaries, artists, and charlatans. Elsa lives in a townhouse with a botanist and a dog and likes to travel to mountains whenever possible.

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Nicola Griffith is a dual US/UK citizen living in Seattle with her wife, novelist and screenwriter Kelley Eskridge. She is the author of seven award-winning novels, including Hild and So Lucky, and her shorter works—essays, fiction, and reviews—are published in Nature, The New York Times, New Scientist, and others. She’s the author of a memoir, and editor of three anthologies of original queer fiction. She holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University, and is known both for her work on identifying and tracing bias in the literary ecosystem and as a consultant on disability issues. She also teaches occasionally—both writing and women’s self-defense—and loves to hit heavy bags at the boxing gym. Most of all she likes to write but will emerge occasionally to beam at the world and drink just the right amount of beer. 

 

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.

Dr Stella Duffy is an existential psychotherapist in private practice and has previously worked in NHS cancer psychological support, hospice bereavement support, and low-cost community services. Her doctoral research was in the embodied experience of post-menopause. The award-winning writer of 17 novels, over 70 short stories and 15 plays, she is also a theatremaker and facilitator, with a particular interest in the creative possibilities of psychotherapy.

The co-founder and for eight years the co-director of Fun Palaces, working with community co-creation across the UK, Stella has been active in equalities work in the culture and LGBTQ+ communities for many decades. She was awarded the OBE in 2016 for Services to the Arts.

Represented by Stephanie Cabot.