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KRISTIN HANNAH
Kristin Hannah is the bestselling author of more than 20 novels including The Nightingale, which was named Goodreads Best Historical Fiction Novel for 2015 and won the People's Choice award for best fiction in the same year. Her novel, The Great Alone, was also voted as Goodreads Best Historical Novel of the year in 2018. Kristin's highly anticipated new release, The Four Winds was published in February 2021 (St. Martin's Press). The Nightingale is currently in production at Tri Star and Firefly Lane premiered on Netflix in early 2021.
Photograph: Kevin Lynch
TAYARI JONES
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including An American Marriage. The novel is an Oprah’s Book Club Selection, appeared on Barack Obama’s reading list, and was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Jones has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and fellowships from United States Artists and NEA. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Photograph: Tyson Alan Horne
MADELINE MILLER
Madeline Miller is the author of two internationally bestselling novels which have been translated into over twenty-five languages. Her first novel, The Song of Achilles, was a New York Times Bestseller, and was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction (now known as the Women’s Prize for Fiction). It was also shortlisted for the 2012 Stonewall Writer of the Year award. Her second novel, Circe, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, won the Indies Choice Best Adult Fiction of the Year Award and the Indies Choice Best Audiobook of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. Miller has a BA and MA in Classics, and has taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students for over fifteen years. She currently lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Photograph: Nina Subin
HILARIE BURTON MORGAN
Hilarie Burton Morgan is the beloved actress and star of One Tree Hill, White Collar, and Lethal Weapon. She is married to Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead, Grey’s Anatomy), and lives on a working farm in the Hudson Valley with her husband and kids. Her New York Times bestselling book, The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm tells the story of leaving Hollywood for a radically different kind of life in upstate New York.
Photograph: Bryan Firestone
SUSAN ORLEAN
Susan Orlean is a New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Her deeply moving explorations of American stories both familiar and obscure have earned her a reputation as one of America’s most distinctive journalistic voices. A staff writer for The New Yorker for over twenty years and a former contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Vogue, she has been praised as “an exceptional essayist” (Publishers Weekly) and a writer who “approaches her subjects with intense curiosity and fairness” (Bookmarks). Her latest work is the instant New York Times bestseller The Library Book, an exploration of the history, power, and future of these endangered institutions was named one of both The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018 and The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2018 and was awarded the California Book Award and Marfield Prize for Arts Writing.
Photograph: Noah Fecks
AMY TAN
Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother’s expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and Valley of Amazement, all New York Times bestsellers. She is the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins; two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat; and numerous articles for magazines. Ms. Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club and was creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated PBS television series for children. She wrote the libretto for the opera based on her novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter. With music composed by Stewart Wallace, the opera had its world premiere in 2008 at the San Francisco Opera. The 30th Anniversary edition of The Joy Luck Clubwith a forward by Tan was released in 2019.
Photograph: AT Johnson
YO-YO MA
Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began to study the cello with his father at age four. Three years later, he moved with his family to New York City where he continued his studies at the Juilliard School. After his conservatory training, he sought out a liberal arts education, graduating from Harvard in 1976. Yo-Yo’s career is testament to his faith in culture’s power to generate the trust and understanding essential to a strong society. This belief inspired Yo-Yo to establish the global cultural collective Silkroad, and, more recently, to set out on the Bach Project — a six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s suites for solo cello and an invitation to a larger conversation about culture, society, and the themes that connect us all.
Photograph: Jason Bell
ALICE HOFFMAN
Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including Magic Lessons, The World That We Knew, The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Red Garden, Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. The fourth and final novel in the Practical Magic series, The Book of Magic, will be released in October 2021.
Photograph: Alyssa Peek
JOYCE KULHAWIK, emcee
Joyce Kulhawik, best known as the pioneering Emmy Award-winning A & E Critic for CBS-Boston has covered local and national events from Boston and Broadway to Hollywood. She is currently President of The Boston Theater Critics Association and a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. Kulhawik hosts the Simmons Leadership Conference, the longest-running conference for professional women in the world. She has co-hosted nationally-syndicated movie-review programs with Roger Ebert, and Leonard Maltin. A vocal 3x cancer survivor, Kulhawik testified before Congress on the 20th anniversary of The National Cancer Act, helped launch the American Cancer Society’s first HOPE LODGE in Boston, and was awarded the ACS National Bronze Medal for her constant outreach.
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