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Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks

(IN PERSON AT LARS HOCKSTAD AUDITORIUM, Central Grade School, 301 Seventh Street, Traverse City, MI & ...

 

Geraldine Brooks is the author of six novels, including Horse, People of the Book, Year of Wonders, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning March. She has also written acclaimed works of nonfiction, including Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Her writing has been translated into over 25 languages and has collectively sold millions of copies around the world. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks now divides her time between Sydney and Martha’s Vineyard.

Bill Morris

Bill Morris

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Wed., Dec. 18, Bill morris joins the National Writers Series

Bill Morris is the author of the novels Motor City and Motor City Burning, along with the family memoir The Age of Astonishment, available from Pegasus Books. He is currently a staff writer with the online literary magazine The Millions, and his writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, LA Weekly, Popular Mechanics, Daily Beast, and numerous other newspapers and magazines. Bill grew up in Detroit and now lives in New York City.

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Wed., Dec. 4, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley joins the National ...

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is the two-time Newbery Honor winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of several acclaimed middle grade novels, including Fighting Words, The War That Saved My Life and Jefferson’s Sons. She and her husband have two grown children and live with their dog, several ponies, a highly opinionated mare, and a surplus of cats on a fifty-two acre farm in Bris­tol, Tennessee. 

Ethan Kross

Ethan Kross

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Thurs., Nov. 21, Ethan Kross joins the National Writers Series

Ethan Kross, PhD, author of the national bestseller Chatter and forthcoming shift, is one of the world’s leading experts on emotion regulation. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory. Ethan has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed about his research on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University.

Aphrodite Jones

Aphrodite Jones

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Thurs., Nov. 7, Aphrodite Jones joins the National Writers Series

 

Aphrodite Jones knows true crime. A bestselling author and TV persona, Jones is known as someone who doesn’t sugar-coat her opinions on controversial murder cases. Always with her finger on the pulse, her true crime books have inspired real-life films including the Academy Award-winning film, Boys Don’t Cry, the ABC movie, Betrayed By Love, and  Lifetime film The Staircase Murders, a story that later became the subject of the hit Netflix docu-series The Staircase.

In her true crime books, Jones brings readers deep into the mind of a killer, revealing the dark motives of a sociopath and the failures of those who unwittingly allowed a monster to hide in plain sight. Her mission is to bring a form of catharsis to the victim’s families, to unravel the “why?” and to write cautionary tales that might help prevent a future tragedy. 

In addition to writing a string of bestselling true crime books, Jones created the hit ID series, True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, which ran for six seasons on Investigation Discovery, airing in 90 countries around the world. All 63 episodes of TCAJ can be seen on Discovery+ 

Throughout her illustrious career, Jones has covered the high-profile trials of O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, and drug kingpin El Chapo Guzman. Her newest book, Levi’s Eyes: A Son’s Deadly Secret and A Father’s Cruel Betrayal, became an instant bestseller on Amazon and has been featured on Dateline NBC, FOX Nation, and on ABC’s 20/20  “The Sins of the Father.”

Jones is an activist for victim’s rights and has given keynote addresses to The Child Rescue Coalition, The Boys and Girls Clubs of Broward County, The American Polygraph Association, The FBI Citizen’s Academy, and was the inaugural speaker at CrimeCon, which continues to draw thousands of participants and top luminaries from every spectrum of the true crime world. 

Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Mon., Oct.28, Paula Hawkins joins the National Writers Series

Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before writing her first novel. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989. Her first thriller, The Girl on the Train, has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide. Published in over fifty languages, it has been a Number 1 bestseller around the world and was a box office hit film starring Emily Blunt. Paula’s thrillers, Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning, were also instant Number 1 bestsellers.

 

Shelby Van Pelt

Shelby Van Pelt

(IN PERSON AT LARS HOCKSTAD & LIVESTREAMED) On Wed., Oct. 16, Shelby Van Pelt joins the National Writers Series

 

When Shelby Van Pelt isn’t writing, she’s herding cats and wrangling children. Her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures (Ecco, 2022) was an instant New York Times Bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show book club pick. In 2023, she was awarded the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize from The Writer’s Center. Remarkably Bright Creatures has sold over a million copies. It has spent, in aggregate, a year-plus on the NYT Hardcover Bestseller list. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Shelby lives in the Chicago area with her family.

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder

Virtual Event Only On Friday, Sept. 20, Timothy Snyder joins the National Writers Series

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His books, which have been published in over forty languages, include Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, Our Malady, and On Freedom. His work has inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, sculptures, a punk rock song, a rap song, a play, and an opera, and he has appeared in over fifty films and documentaries. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Wed., July 31, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joins the National ...

Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan. Known for her bold and plainspoken style, Whitmer is a national voice on the rights of women, voters, and the LGBTQ+ community. She rose to national prominence for her leadership in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when her efforts to save lives in the state earned her the nickname “That Woman from Michigan” from the former president. Later that year, a domestic terrorist cell began planning to kidnap and kill her, a plot that was foiled by the FBI and state police. Whitmer is a lifelong Michigander who first ran for office at age twenty-nine, has served in both state houses, and has never lost an election. She is the proud mother of two daughters, a huge Detroit Lions fan, and the subject of the song “Big Gretch” by rapper GMac Cash.

Peter Heller

Peter Heller

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Sat., Aug. 24, Peter Heller joins the National Writers Series

Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, and a former contributing editor at Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure. He wrote The Last Ranger, The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars, which was published in 22 languages. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Denver, Colorado.

Erik Larson

Erik Larson

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Thurs., July 11, Erik Larson joins the National Writers Series

Erik Larson is the author of eight books, six of which became New York Times bestsellers. His latest books, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, both hit no. 1 on the list soon after launch. 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. It lingered on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade and is currently in development at Disney Studios. Erik’s In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, is currently in development with StudioCanal and Playtone.

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley

(IN PERSON AT CITY OPERA HOUSE & LIVESTREAMED) On Tues., June 25, Jane Smiley joins the National Writers Series

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the Last Hundred Years TrilogySome LuckEarly Warning, and Golden Age. She is the author as well of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.