Virtual Festival Program

Terry Brooks was born in Illinois in 1944. He spent a great deal of his childhood and early adulthood dreaming up stories in and around Sinnissippi Park, the very same setting for Running with the Demon. He received his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College, where he majored in English Literature, and went on to earn his graduate degree from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University.
A writer since high school and heavily influenced by William Faulkner, it took him seven years to finish writing The Sword of Shannara, which published in 1977. It became the first work of fiction to ever appear on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list, where it remained for over five months.
He published The Elfstones of Shannara in 1982 and The Wishsong of Shannara in 1985, both bestsellers.
Since that time, he has written numerous novels in the Shannara, Landover, and Word/Void series, including being hand-selected by George Lucas to write the novelization of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
“The Shannara Chronicles,” a first season 10-episode TV show, premiered January 5, 2016 on MTV. It adapts The Elfstones of Shannara and features the creative talents of Jon Favreau, Al Gough, Miles Millar, Jonathan Liebesman, and Terry Brooks as an Executive Producer.
Terry Brooks lives with his wife Judine in the Pacific Northwest and on the road meeting his fans.
Website: https://terrybrooks.net/

Following three years as a cook in the Canadian Naval Reserve, a year studying forestry, a winter hanging around Universal studios, a degree in Radio and Television Arts, and time spent managing North America's oldest surviving SF&F bookstore (Bakka-Phoenix back when it was Bakka) Tanya Huff moved to rural Ontario with her wife Fiona Patton and began writing science fiction and fantasy full-time—or as full-time as possible around the needs of multiple pets and a large vegetable garden. Her thirty-two books and eighty-five short stories range from heroic fantasy (the Quarters books) through humour (the Keeper Chronicles) to military SF (the Torin Kerr Confederation & Peacekeeper series) and include SCHOLAR OF DECAY a novel set in TSR's Ravenloft universe as well as four short story collections and six e-collections. Her latest novel was A PRIVILEGE OF PEACE (pb DAW, June 2019) the last of the Torin Kerr books that began with VALOR’S CHOICE in 1998, and her next will be a secondary world fantasy, with the working title Weapon of Mage Destruction which she was not allowed to keep but she loves so she's mentioning it here. Look for INTO THE BROKEN LANDS, summer 2022.
Her entire backlist is available, some now ebook and print on demand. There are audio books of almost everything and what remains is slowly moving towards an audio production.
Her books have been translated into ten languages and her five book Blood series was adapted into the 22 episode television series BLOOD TIES—a process she enjoyed every moment of. Not only because writing episode six was the first time in twenty-five years she actually got to use her degree.
She is the only author who has won both the Constellation Award and the Prix Aurora Award. She watches a ridiculous amount of YouTube programming, knits socks, should practise the guitar more often, has won one game of Settlers of Catan, and Peter Davidson is her Doctor. Terry Pratchett and Charles de Lint remain at the top of her favourites list and she still hasn't gotten over the loss of Diana Wynne Jones.

New York Times, USA Today, and Globe and Mail bestselling author Susanna Kearsley is a former museum curator who loves restoring the lost voices of real people to the page, writing twin-stranded stories that typically interweave modern adventure with romance, historical intrigue, and sometimes an edge of the unexplained. First published in 1994, she has been a full-time writer since 1996, and is currently at work on her fifteenth novel. Her books, which have sold over a million copies in North America alone and are available in translation in more than 25 countries, have won the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and National Readers’ Choice Awards, and been finalists for the UK’s Romantic Novel of the Year and the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. A settler on Anishinaabe lands near Toronto, she has also lived in Texas, South Korea, and, all too briefly, in Wales. Photo credit: Wendy McAlpine Website: https://susannakearsley.com/

Jason Kirk has worked as an editor of books and magazines for almost 20 years. He has worked on more than 150 fiction and nonfiction books, which collectively have hit the Wall Street Journal best seller list nine times; won more than two dozen awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke and British Science Fiction Awards, plus three awards for Best Edited Book and finalists for the Philip. K. Dick and Bram Stoker Awards; and moved more than nine million units. He is also the author of A Fabulous Hag in Purple on the Moor (Bitterzoet Press) and the composer of The Mirror of Simple Souls, an opera collaboration with the poet Anne Carson. Social media: @brasswax.

Nicole Luiken wrote her first novel at age thirteen and had two books published while still in high school. She writes SF/Fantasy for both teens and adults and is the author of over a dozen traditionally published novels. Many of her books have been finalists for awards such as the Red Maple, the Moonbeam and the Monica Hughes Science Fiction and Fantasy Award. Violet Eyes and Frost are her most well-known titles. Her most recent teen release, Feral, was called "a howling good time" by Kirkus Reviews. Nicole lives with her family in Edmonton. It is impossible for her to go more than three days in a row without writing. Website: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057574333075

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the USA Today bestselling author of 13 psychological thrillers, winning the genre's most prestigious awards: five Agathas, four Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV, winning 37 EMMYs. Book reviewers call her “a master of suspense” and “superb and gifted storyteller.” THE FIRST TO LIE garnered a Publishers Weekly starred review and is nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Novel and Mary Higgins Clark Award. Watch for HER PERFECT LIFE on September 14, which received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, which called it "A superlative thriller." Website: https://hankphillippiryan.com/