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/

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/

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/

Edward Willett is the award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, including the Worldshapers series and the Masks of Agyrima trilogy (as E.C. Blake) for DAW Books, the YA fantasy series The Shards of Excalibur, and the YA SF novel Star Song, among many others. He won Canada’s Aurora Award for Best Long-Form Work in English in 2009 for Marseguro (DAW) and for Best Fan Related Work in 2019 for The Worldshapers podcast, where he interviews other science fiction and fantasy authors about the creative process. He has been shortlisted several times. His twelfth novel for DAW Books, the humorous space opera The Tangled Stars, comes out this fall.
Ed is also the owner of Shadowpaw Press, named after his black Siberian cat, which has published two anthologies of short fiction by guests of The Worldshapers podcast, Shapers of Worlds and Shapers of Worlds Volume II. Volume III is planned for this fall. In addition to publishing these anthologies and republishing Ed’s own titles that have been orphaned by other publishers, Shadowpaw Press is now publishing original novels by other authors, and Ed hopes to do more of that in the future.
Ed’s non-fiction titles run the gamut from children’s science books and biographies to local histories to Genetics Demystified, published by McGraw-Hill. A former newspaper reporter and editor, Ed is also a professional actor and singer who has performed in numerous plays, operas, and musicals over the years.
Ed lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with his wife, Margaret Anne Hodges, P.Eng., a past president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan. They have a college-aged daughter, Alice. Find Ed on Twitter @ewillett, on Facebook @edward.willett, on Instagram @edwardwillettauthor, and on YouTube at youtube.com/edwardwillett. Website: https://edwardwillett.com/