Bainbridge Island Book Festival
Keynote Author - Edwidge Danticat
2026 Authors
Edwidge Danticat’s newest novel, Déy, was longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award on September 17. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, Brother, I’m Dying, Create Dangerously, Claire of the Sea Light, The Art of Death, Everything Inside, a Reese’s Book Club selection and National Book Critics Circle Awards winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, Haiti Noir, and Haiti Noir 2. She has written eight books for children and young adults: Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama's Nightingale, Untwine, My Mommy Medicine, Watch Out For Falling Iguanas, and a travel narrative, After the Dance. Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” fellow, the winner of the 2018 Neustadt International Prize, the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award, the 2020 Bocas Fiction Prize, the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Literature, a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a two-time winner of The Story Prize and the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her 2024 essay collection, We’re Alone, was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and in March 2026, she received the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
About Dèy
From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid, timely story, moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, of a woman whose sense of self and family are called into question when she gets caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day.
“Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?” These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she’s safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë’s father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she’s spiraling toward herself; and her father’s affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti.
Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one’s heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice—Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after—Magnolia is a narrator who is “yon pati koukouy, part firefly”: flitting and shimmering between different worlds.
Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. Brave and striking, Dèy is one of Danticat’s most powerful and deeply affecting works yet, told with her signature “unfaltering voice and evocative beauty” (The Boston Globe).
In conversation with Moira Macdonald
A longtime Seattleite with roots in Vancouver, B.C., Moira has been an arts critic for The Seattle Times since 2001, writing about movies, books, dance, television, fashion, and the occasional cat-related event. Her journalism work has brought her in contact with countless interesting people over the years; among her favorite interviews are George Clooney, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colin Farrell, and her childhood idol, Julie Andrews. Moira is a two-time graduate of the University of Washington, with an M.A. in English literature and a B.A. in literature and theater. She is a proud founding member of the Common Readers, a small Seattle book club that’s been meeting since 1989. Storybook Ending, which has sold in 19 international territories, is her first novel — and a reminder that it’s never too late to stop procrastinating and do the thing you’ve always wanted to do. Storybook Ending is a USA Today national bestseller, a Barnes & Noble monthly fiction pick, and the 2026 Bainbridge Island Reads selection.
We are proud to present a fantastic lineup of esteemed authors free of charge during the day Saturday September 26th.
Sarah Callender
SARAH CALLENDER has the best jobs in the world: writing books for teenagers and teaching middle school English. While Sarah likes normal stuff (chocolate, cute shoes, peonies, cake, searching for the perfect watermelon, laughing); she also likes weird stuff (crows, fashion from the 1960s, being trapped in a classroom with middle schoolers, mason bees, semicolons, and Abe Lincoln). And, because Sarah likes to spend time with smart, curious teenagers who make her laugh, those are the characters who tend to fill her novels. Sarah lives in Seattle with her funny, fabulous, tall husband. Lucy in Between is her debut novel.
Sarah Crouch
SARAH CROUCH is the USA TODAY Bestselling author of Middletide, a literary thriller set in the Pacific Northwest, where she was raised. She is also known for her accolades in the world of athletics as a professional marathon runner.
Maria Dolan and Kathryn True
MARIA DOLAN has written about bats, orcas, ocean acidification, living shorelines, Vaux's Swifts, and the smell of a moose for publications including Slate, Smithsonian, CityLab, the Seattle Times, Sierra, Seattle Magazine, Ensia, and Salon. She lives in West Seattle. Visit her online at mariadolan.org or on Instagram @bookish_md
KATHRYN TRUE embraces her naturalist tendencies through hiking, birding, community science, and swimming in cold mountain lakes. She blogs about the natural world for Vashon Nature Center and authored a Seattle Times series called "Natural Wanders." Her work has also appeared in Sunset and Alaska Airlines Magazine. She lives on Vashon Island, WA. Visit her online at kathryntrue.com or on Instagram @trueislander63
Saturday Panelists
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
LYANDA LYNN HAUPT is an award-winning author, naturalist, ecophilosopher, and speaker whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and the wild, natural world.
Lyanda’s writing is acclaimed for combining scientific knowledge with literary, poetic prose. Her previous books include: Mozart’s Starling The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin’s Lost Notebooks, and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. She is a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Nautilus Book Award, a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and a two-time winner of the Washington State Book Award.
Lyanda has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and as a seabird researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. She lives in the mossy green woodlands of the Pacific Northwest. Follow Lyanda on Instagram, and subscribe to her newsletter, Wander.
Kim Fu
KIM FU is the author of five books, including the 2026 novel The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, a Belletrist Book Club pick, New York Times notable book, and Indigo bestseller.
Fu’s story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022) won the Washington State Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. It was also a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ignyte Awards, the Shirley Jackson Awards, and the Saroyan International Prize. Stories in this collection have been selected for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best of the Net, featured on Levar Burton Reads and Selected Shorts, and optioned for television and film.
Fu lives in Seattle, Washington.
Anna Holmes
ANNA HOLMES is an award-winning writer and editor whose work has appeared numerous publications, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. A one-time columnist for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Anna has published two books, including 2013’s The Book of Jezebel, based on the website she founded in 2007. In June 2024, she succeeded Roxane Gay as the writer of the “Work Friend” column for The New York Times’ Sunday Business section. Her next book, The Power of No, will be published by Crown later this year and she is currently working as a contributing writer to The Atlantic and writing her fourth book, a memoir. She lives in Los Angeles.
Ari Koontz
ARI KOONTZ (they/he) is a queer nonbinary writer, editor, and artist with an MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University, where they also taught composition and served as associate nonfiction editor for the literary magazine Passages North. In the classroom and on the page, Ari is dedicated to centering the beautiful complexities of queer & trans identity and community, and creating worlds in which everyone, but especially young readers, can see themselves represented and celebrated.
Ari has served as associate editor and digital media manager for Wizards in Space Magazine, a print mag committed to uplifting diverse voices & stories, building sustainable literary communities, and paying all contributors; they have also been a reader for Under the Gum Tree, Oyster River Pages, and Jeopardy Magazine. Ari’s stories and essays have appeared in Storm Cellar, Alien, Ruminate, Under the Gum Tree, Sweet, Alocasia, and others.
Ari’s non-literary interests include cooking & baking, sad gay music, wandering the woods in autumn, and the TV series Survivor.
Roberta Kwok
ROBERTA KWOK is a science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NewYorker.com, Nature, New Scientist, Audubon, and other publications. She has received a fellowship from the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union. Before becoming a journalist, Kwok worked in a genetics lab at Stanford University. She lives in the Seattle area and is originally from Canada.
Layli Long Soldier
LAYLI LONG SOLDIER earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016.
Long Soldier is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Loren Long
LOREN LONG, is the award-winning illustrator of nearly 30 picture books, over half of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, including titles by Barack Obama, Madonna, Amanda Gorman, and Matt de la Peña. He is the author and illustrator of the Otis series, which was developed as an animated television series on Apple TV+, as well as the #1 NYT bestselling The Yellow Bus. A lifelong Midwesterner, Long resides in Cincinnati, where he and his wife raised two sons and four dogs. He serves on the board of literacy nonprofit Queen City Book Bank, whose headquarters feature a mural of his art.
Kevin C. Morris
KEVIN C. MORRIS is the author of Untamed Coast, a debut novel coming from Ballantine / Penguin Random House in September 2026.
An engineer, writer, boater, pilot, entrepreneur, and occasional deckhand, he brings a lifelong curiosity about technology and the natural world to his storytelling.
Born and raised in Texas, Morris has made Portland, Oregon, his home for more than forty years, but spends his summers navigating the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska—a rugged landscape that fuels both his adventures and his fiction.
Miranda Mundt
MIRANDA MUNDT is a Seattle area–based graphic novelist best known for their webcomic Muted and for co-creating LoveBot with their wife, fellow artist Chase Keels. Mundt studied 2D animation at Vancouver Film School and has also worked extensively as a freelance illustrator, layout designer, and graphic designer.
Anna Malaika Tubbs
ANNA MALAIKA TUBBS is a 2X New York Times Bestselling author who grew up in Dubai, Mexico, Sweden, Estonia, Azerbaijan, as well as the United States. Influenced by her exposure to all kinds of cultures and beliefs, Anna is inspired to bring people together through the celebration of difference. Anna holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Medical Anthropology from Stanford University. She takes from her academic background and produces content that is easy for others to connect with and understand.
Anna has published articles on topics ranging from celebrating motherhood to addressing the forced sterilization of Black women as well as the importance of feminism, intersectionality, and inclusivity. Her writing has been featured in TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, CNN, Motherly, Newsweek, The Guardian, and more.
Her first book, titled The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, was published by Flatiron Books in February of 2021. A New York Times’ Bestseller, a New York Times Editors Choice, and an Amazon Editor’s choice, the book has achieved critical acclaim and has been featured in various national outlets. Her second book Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us came out in May of 2025 and it became an instant New York Times’ Bestseller, a USA Today Bestseller, an Amazon editor’s pick, and was recently shortlisted for the Stowe Prize for Literary Activism.
Anna is a highly sought-after speaker who travels across the world with her talks. Her TED Talk “How Moms Shape the World” has amassed 2 million views.
Anna is currently working on her next non-fiction, a novel, a children’s book series, and she’s developing scripted and unscripted screen projects.
Alexandra Oliva
ALEXANDRA OLIVA is the author of USA Today bestseller The Radiant Dark, Forget Me Not, and The Last One, which was selected as a Best Book of 2016 by The Seattle Times and was translated into twenty-five languages. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and other publications. Ali grew up in a tiny town in New York's Adirondack Mountains and received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from The New School. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
Peter Hendrickson
PETER HENDRICKSON is an affiliate professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington, as well as a longtime journalist, educator, data analyst, and consultant. He lives on a family farm in Redmond, Washington.
Peter Rock
PETER ROCK is the author of eleven previous works of fiction, including My Abandonment, which won the Alex Award and was adapted into the film Leave No Trace. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and John Dos Passos Prize, he lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two daughters.
Kaela Rivera
KAELA RIVERA is the multi-award-winning author of the Cece Rios trilogy, LEGO DREAMZzz: Dream Chasers and the Riddle-Spokens, and The Hungry Forest (coming Aug 18, 2026). She grew up reading the folktales of her Mexican-American and British parents in the forests of Tennessee, but now she writes about them from the soaring mountains of Utah. When not weaving together stories, she works in marketing, watches anime, or busies herself illustrating new adventures. She believes in the power of hope and aims to write adventures that heal. Sign up for her newsletter at kaelarivera.com.
Craig Romano
CRAIG ROMANO is a prolific and award-winning author, an ardent conservationist, and a Northwest trails and hiking expert. He hikes, runs ultra-marathons, paddles, and bikes and has written for more than two dozen publications including Northwest Travel and Life and Washington Trails; and for numerous tourism publications and websites. He provides weekly content for Hikeoftheweek.com and is co-host of the Washington State Hiking podcast. He lives in Skagit County, Washington, but he is most frequently out hiking or trail running somewhere, often accompanied by his wife, Heather, and son, Giovanni. Visit Craig online at craigromano.com, on Facebook at Craig Romano guidebook author, and on Instagram @craig.romano.
Garth Stein
GARTH STEIN, the #1 NYT bestselling author of the The Art of Racing the Rain, presents his 3-part graphic novel series, THE CLOVEN. It’s a collaboration with Matthew Southworth, illustrator of STUMPTOWN (comics and the hit TV show on ABC). The Art of Racing the Rain became a blockbuster movie in 2019, starring Milo Ventimiglia and Kevin Costner. It has sold more than 7 million copies world-wide, been translated into 38 languages, and spent more than three years on the New York Times bestseller list. The novel inspired a Young Reader edition as well as four children’s picture books. Stein is the author of three other novels—A Sudden Light, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, and Raven Stole the Moon. He’s the chair of the Author Leadership Circle of Book Industry Charitable Foundation and holds a Masters of Fine Arts in film from Columbia. He’s produced and directed several award-winning documentaries and music videos, and is the winner of multiple literary awards, including two PNBA awards. Garth’s ancestry is diverse: his mother is of Tlingit Indian and Irish descent; his father is Jewish. Garth lives in Seattle with his wife and three sons. He was an amateur race car driver until he left racing after a serious crash—while racing in the rain.
Caskey Russell
CASKEY RUSSELL is from Seattle Washington, and has lived in Washington State (Bellingham, Seattle, Kirkland) Oregon, Iowa, Wyoming, and New Zealand. He is a father, a professor, a musician, and an enrolled member of the Tlingit Nation (Eagle / Kooyu Kwáan) of Alaska.
Helene Wecker
HELENE WECKER’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, was awarded the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, the VCU Cabell Award for First Novel, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and was nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award. A Midwest native, she holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Joyland and Catamaran, as well as the fantasy anthology The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and children.
Curtis White
CURTIS WHITE is a novelist and social critic whose works include Memories of My Father Watching TV, The Middle Mind, and, more recently, The Science Delusion, We Robots, and Lacking Character. His essays have appeared in Harpers and Tricycle.He taught English at Illinois State University. He is the founder (with Ronald Sukenick) of FC2, a publisher of innovative fiction run collectively by its authors. He lives in Port Townsend, WA.
Iona Whishaw
IONA WHISHAW has been a youth worker, social worker, teacher and an award winning High School Principal, who continued with her writing throughout her working life. Receiving her Masters in Creative writing from UBC, Iona has published short fiction, poetry, poetry translation and one children’s book, Henry and the Cow Problem. The Lane Winslow mystery series is her first foray into adult fiction.
Iona was born in Kimberley BC, but grew up in a number of different places, including a small community on Kootenay Lake, as well as Mexico and Central America, and the US because of her father’s geological work. She took a degree in history and education from Antioch College, and subsequent degrees in Writing at UBC and pedagogy at Simon Fraser University. Her own writing output took a brief back seat during her teaching career, but she shared her passion for writing by nurturing a love of writing in the students in English, Creative Writing, and Spanish classes. During the course of her career as a Principal in Vancouver she was awarded the Woman of Distinction in Education by the YWCA in 2010 and a Canada’s Outstanding Principals award in 2012.
Her hobbies have included dance, painting, reading, and gardening. She currently is a vocalist for a small Balkan dance band in Vancouver, and is patiently waiting for her next opportunity to engage in her current pash, long distance, cross country rambling in England.
She is married, has one son and two grandsons, and lives in Vancouver with her artist husband, Terry Miller.
David B. Williams
DAVID B. WILLIAMS is an author, naturalist, and tour guide. He is the author 12 books, including the award-winning Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound plus Wild in Seattle: Stories at the Crossroads of People and Nature, Cairns: Messengers in Stone; Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology; and Waterway: The Story of Seattle’s Ship Canal and Locks, the latter two of which were finalists for the Washington State Book Award. Williams is a Curatorial Associate at the Burke Museum and writes a free weekly Substack newsletter, the Street Smart Naturalist. He lives in Seattle.
