Featured Presenters
Kevin O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien– Before his thrillers landed him on the New York Times Bestseller list, Kevin was a railroad inspector. He quit his job in 1997, when his novel, Only Son, was picked up by Readers Digest and also optioned for film, thanks to interest from Tom Hanks. He has been writing full time ever since. The author of 15 internationally-published thrillers, he won the Spotted Owl Award for Best Pacific Northwest Mystery (The Last Victim). He is a core member of Seattle 7 Writers. Kevin’s new thriller is Tell Me You’re Sorry. Visit here and here to learn more.
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Gail Tsukiyama
Gail Tsukiyama– Gail was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing. Most of her college work was focused on poetry, and she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, as well as a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her books include The Samurai’s Garden, The Language of Threads, Women of the Silk, Dreaming Water, A Hundred Flowers, Street of a Thousand Blossoms, and Night of Many Dreams. Click here to learn more.
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Nancy Holder
Nancy Holder– Nancy’s work has appeared on many bestseller lists. A five-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, she has also received accolades from the American Library Association, the American Reading Association, the New York Public Library, and Romantic Times. She and Debbie Viguié coauthored the New York Times bestselling Wicked series for Simon and Schuster. They have continued their collaboration with the Crusade and the Wolf Springs Chronicles series. She is also the author of the young adult horror series, Possessions, for Razorbill. She has sold many novels and book projects set in the MTV Teen Wolf, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Saving Grace, Hellboy, and Smallville universes. She has also sold approximately two hundred short stories and essays on writing and popular culture. Her anthology, Outsiders, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 2005. She is an editor and writer of comic books, graphic novels, and pulp fiction for Moonstone Books, where much of her work centers around Sherlock Holmes. She writes a column for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Bulletin. She also teaches in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program, offered through the University of Southern Maine. Last summer, she served as the Writer in Residence at Odyssey, a six-week summer intensive workshop at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Learn more here.
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Eric Witchey
Eric Witchey– Eric has made a living as a freelance writer and communication consultant for over 20 years. In addition to producing many corporate non-fiction titles, he has sold more than 90 short stories and four novels. His stories have appeared in six genres on five continents, and he has received recognition from New Century Writers, Writers of the Future, Writer’s Digest, The Eric Hoffer Prose Award program, Short Story America, and other organizations. His How-To articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest Magazine, and other print and online magazines. When not teaching or writing, he spends his time fly fishing or restoring antique, model locomotives. Learn more here.
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Leigh Anne Jasheway
Leigh Anne Jasheway– Leigh Anne is an award-winning comedy writer who has 21 published books, including Bedtime Stories for Dogs and Not Guilty by Reason of Menopause. She has written regular humor columns for Family Circle, The Funny Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Comic News, and Dash. For the past 20 years, she has taught humor writing for Lane Community College. Her writing tips regularly appear in Writer’s Digest. She has also written and produced a stage play and a wacky academic grammar textbook with accompanying Daily Show-like videos. Click here to learn more.
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Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nina Kiriki Hoffman – Over the past thirty years, Nina has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread that Binds the Bones, won a Stoker award in 1994, and her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula Award in 2009. Nina’s middle-school novel Thresholds, was published by Viking in August, 2010. Its sequel, Meeting, was published in August, 2011. Fairwood Press published Permeable Borders, a collection of Nina’s short stories, in 2012. Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She teaches a short story writing class through her local community college, and she works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon. Click here to learn more.
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Miriam Gershow
Miriam Gershow – Miriam is a novelist, short story writer, and teacher. Her debut novel, The Local News, was published by in 2009. It has been called “unusually credible and precise” and “deftly heartbreaking” by The New York Times, as well as “an accomplished debut” (Publisher’s Weekly) with a “disarmingly unsentimental narrative voice,” (Kirkus Reviews). Miriam is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, as well as an Oregon Literary Fellowship. Her stories appear in The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Nimrod International Journal, The Journal, and Gulf Coast, among other journals. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. She taught fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin as well as descriptive writing to gifted high school students through Johns Hopkins University. She currently lives in Eugene with her husband. She is at work on her next book. Click here to learn more.
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Linda S. Clare
Linda S. Clare – Linda is an award-winning author and coauthor of several books and has also published many essays, stories, and poems in publications including The Christian Reader, The Denver Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Born in Arizona, Linda and her husband now make their home in Eugene, Oregon, where Linda has taught college-level creative writing classes, and writes, edits, and mentors other writers. She also is a frequent writing conference presenter, a church retreat leader, and mom to four grown children and five wayward cats. Her newest novel is A Sky Without Stars. Click here to learn more.
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Bob Keefer
Bob Keefer – Bob is the former arts writer for The Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene. He now works as a freelance writer and photographer. A 1975 graduate of Harvard University, he has won numerous state, regional, and national writing awards. In 2006 he was a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Journalism Institute for Theater and Musical Theater in Los Angeles. He is also a member of the board of the Lane Arts Council in Eugene. Bob lives on 18 wooded acres outside Creswell, Oregon, with his wife, Lisa, a statistical analyst, and their son, Noah Keefer Strycker, a nature writer and bird adventurer. Click here to learn more.
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Alan M. Clark
Alan M. Clark – An author and illustrator, Alan grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. He has created illustrations for hundreds of books, including works of fiction of various genres, nonfiction, textbooks, young adult fiction, and children’s books. Awards for his illustration work include the World Fantasy Award, four Chesley Awards, and the IHG Award. He is the author of fourteen published books, including eight novels, a lavishly illustrated novella, four collections of fiction, and a nonfiction full-color book of his artwork. His latest novel, Say Anything But Your Prayers, the second novel in his Jack the Ripper Victims Series, was released in August of 2014. Mr. Clark’s company, IFD Publishing, has released six traditional books and twenty-five e-books by such authors as F. Paul Wilson, Elizabeth Engstrom, and Jeremy Robert Johnson. He is an Associate Editor for Broken River Books, a Portland, Oregon publisher of crime fiction. Alan M. Clark and his wife, Melody, live in Oregon.
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Elizabeth Engstrom
Elizabeth Engstrom – Elizabeth is a sought-after teacher and keynote speaker at writing conferences, conventions, and seminars around the world. She has written thirteen books and edited four anthologies, and she has over two hundred fifty short stories, articles, and essays in print. Her latest book-length work of fiction is the thriller Baggage Check. She is on faculty at the University of Phoenix. Click here to learn more.
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Daryll Lynne Evans
Daryll Lynne Evans – Daryll Lynne began her writing career as a playwright with the Performing Arts Conservatory in Colorado, where she also taught theatre and play writing to youth. She has an MFA in fiction from Purdue University, where she taught creative writing and worked with Sycamore Review. She has presented writing workshops as part of the Loose Leaf Writing Series in Lafayette, Indiana, and for the Mid-Valley chapter of Willamette Writers in Eugene, and was a presenter at Wordcrafters’ inaugural conference.