Jennie Shortridge is the author of five bestselling novels: Love Water Memory, When She Flew, Love & Biology at the Center of the Universe, Eating Heaven, and Riding With the Queen. She is an avid volunteer and mentor, and is co-founder of Seattle7Writers.org, a nonprofit collective of authors that raises money and awareness for literacy. Jennie is currently working on a memoir.

Erik Larson’s latest work of narrative nonfiction is DEAD WAKE: THE LAST CROSSING OF THE LUSITANIA, which became an immediate New York Times bestseller. His saga of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing, and lingered on various NYT best-seller lists for the better part of a decade. Hulu plans to adapt the book for a limited TV series, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese as executive producers. Erik’s IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS, about America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter, has been optioned by Tom Hanks for development as a feature film. His next book, THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE: A SAGA OF CHURCHILL, FAMILY, AND DEFIANCE DURING THE BLITZ, due out in early spring 2020, is a story of geopolitical brinksmanship during Churchill’s first year as prime minister, but also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country house, Chequers, and his “full-moon home,” Ditchley, where Churchill, his family, and his “Secret Circle” convene when the moon is in its brightest phases and the bombing threat is highest. Erik is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and other publications. He has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, the University of Oregon, and the Chuckanut Writers Conference, and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. A former resident of Seattle, he now lives in Manhattan with his wife, a neonatologist and author of the nonfiction memoir, ALMOST HOME, which, as Erik puts it, "could make a stone cry." They have three daughters in far-flung locations and professions.

Suzanne Selfors lives on an island near Seattle where it rains all the time, which is why she tends to write about cloudy, moss-covered, green places. She's married, has two kids, and writes full time. Her favorite writers are Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Dickens, and most especially, Roald Dahl. Please visit her at www.suzanneselfors.com to learn more about her books.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. Susan Elizabeth George is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. Eleven of her novels, featuring her character Inspector Lynley, have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. She was born in Warren, Ohio, but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was eighteen months old. She was a student of English, receiving a teaching certificate. While teaching English in the public school system, she completed an advanced degree in psychology. Her first published novel was A Great Deliverance in 1988, featuring Thomas Lynley, Lord Asherton, a Scotland Yard inspector of noble birth; Barbara Havers, Lynley's assistant, from a very working-class background; Lady Helen Clyde, Lynley's girlfriend and later wife, of noble birth as well; and Lynley's friends Simon and Deborah St. James. This Elizabeth George is distinct from the other author named Elizabeth George (Christian author). Series: * Inspector Lynley

Susan Wiggs' life is all about family, friends...and fiction. She lives at the water's edge on an island in Puget Sound, and she commutes to her writers' group in a 17-foot motorboat. She serves as author liaison for Field's End, a literary community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, bringing inspiration and instruction from the world's top authors to her seaside community. (See www.fieldsend.org) She's been featured in the national media, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation," and is a popular speaker locally and nationally. According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with "refreshingly honest emotion," and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is "one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book." Booklist characterizes her books as "real and true and unforgettable." She is the recipient of three RITA (sm) awards and four starred reviews from Publishers Weekly for her books. The Winter Lodge and Passing Through Paradise have appeared on PW’s annual "Best Of" lists. Several of her books have been listed as top Booksense picks and optioned as feature films. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have made national bestseller lists, including the USA Today, Washington Post and New York Times lists. The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. Readers can learn more on the web at www.susanwiggs.com and on her lively blog at www.susanwiggs.wordpress.com.

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 8 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and the literary novels, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell - Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award and the critically acclaimed, The World Played Chess; as well as the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction and a three-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has also been a finalist for many other awards including the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. Robert Dugoni’s books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Visit his website at www.robertdugoni.com, and follow him on twitter @robertdugoni and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuthorRobertDugoni

William Dietrich is a NY Times bestelling author of the Ethan Gage series of eight books which have sold into 28 languages. He is also the author of six other adventure novels, several nonfiction works on the environmental history of the Pacific Northwest, and a contributor to several books. Bill was a career journalist, sharing a Pulitzer for national reporting at the Seattle Times for coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He taught environmental journalism at Huxley College, a division of Western Washington University, and was adviser to Planet Magazine there. He was Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and received several National Science Foundation fellowships for reporting on science. His travels have taken him from the South Pole to the Arctic, and from the Dead Sea to the base camp of Mount Everest. The traveling informs his books. He lives in Anacortes, WA, in the San Juan islands, and is a fan of books, movies, history, science, and the outdoors.

Kathleen Alcalá's most recent book is a republication of Spirits of the Ordinary: A Tale of Casas Grandes by Raven Chronicles Press (see book giveaway!) The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, is now in paper from University of Washington Press. Combining memoir, historical records, and a blueprint for sustainability, Alcalá explores our relationship with food at the local level, delving into our common pasts and cultures to prepare for the future. With degrees from Stanford, the University of Washington, and the University of New Orleans, Kathleen is also a graduate and one-time instructor of the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Kathleen Alcalá has received a Western States Book Award, the Governors Writers Award and two Artist Trust Fellowships. She is a recent Whitely Fellow, a previous Hugo House Writer in Residence, and teaches at Hugo House and the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network. Her sixth book, The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, explores our relationship with geography, food, history, and ethnicity. “Not one tale is like another, yet all together they form a beautiful whole, a world where one would like to stay forever.” Ursula K. Le Guin on Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist. “Alcalá’s life work has been an ongoing act of translation… She has been building prismatic bridges not just between the Mexican and American cultures, but also across divides of gender, generation, religion, and ethnicity.” —Seattle Times

Jamie Ford’s debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Jamie’s work has been published in 34 languages. Also, because Jamie feels weird writing about himself in the 3rd person, he’s going to say… Hi, this is me. Not a publicist. Not some weird aggregated bit of web-content, just little ol’ me, the author, sitting here in my favorite Batman pajamas (yes, I have several pairs) writing this note in my cozy home office, dog at my feet. Her name is Lucy and she’s twitching right now, obviously chasing squirrels in her dreams. While we’re chatting, I should mention that my latest novel novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, is now available for pre-order :) If you’re looking for more things that have spilled out of my brain, I have steampunk storiess in The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come (The Apocalypse Triptych). Also a tale in Stories from Suffragette City. Lest I forget, I have a story in Anonymous Sex, but I'm not allowed to say which story is mine.