William Kent Krueger
Location-Minnesota
His novel This Tender Land is a Roaming the Arts favorite of 2020.
His Cork O’Connor series continued in 2022 with Fox Creek and his latest stand-alone in 2023, The River We Remember.
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Kate Atkinson
Location – Edinboro, Scotland
Kate Atkinson
Latest works include Shrines of Gaiety (London in the Roaring 20’s) and Normal Rules Don’t Apply ( Short Stories)
Kate Atkinson was born in York in 1951 and studied English Literature at Dundee University.
After graduating in 1974, she researched a postgraduate doctorate on American Literature. She later taught at Dundee and began writing short stories in 1981. She began writing for women’s magazines after winning the 1986 Woman’s Own Short Story Competition. She was runner-up for the Bridport Short Story Prize in 1990 and won an Ian St James Award in 1993 for her short-story Karmic Mothers, which she later adapted for BBC2 television as part of its ‘Tartan Shorts’ series. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award, beating Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins’ biography Gladstone. The book is set in Yorkshire, narrated by Ruby Lennox, who takes the reader through the complex history of her family, covering the events of the twentieth century and reaching back into the past to uncover the lives of distant ancestors. The book has been adapted for radio and theatre, and has been adapted for television by the author. Her second novel, Human Croquet, was published in 1997 and relates the story of another family, the Fairfaxes, through flashback and historical narrative. Her third novel, Emotionally Weird, was published in 2000, and in 2002 a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World.
Kate Atkinson has written two plays for the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh: a short play, Nice (1996), and Abandonment, which premiered as part of the Edinburgh Festival in August 2000. She currently lives in Edinburgh and is an occasional contributor to newspapers and magazines. The four books Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), shortlisted for the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year, When Will There be Good News? (2008) and Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), form a crime series featuring ex-policeman Jackson Brodie. These books were adapted for television and a 6-part series starring Jason Isaacs as Jackson Brodie was broadcast in 2011. In 2013 she published Life after Life, winner of the Costa Novel Award and the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize; and A God in Ruins (2015), a companion novel to Life After Life, featuring several of the same characters. In 2019 Jackson Brodie returned in Big Sky, and Atkinson also published Transcription.
(British Council – Literature)
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Randy Wayne White
Randy Wayne White
SALT RIVER AND CARIBBEAN RIM are White’s most recent Doc Ford books and SEDUCED is the 4th book in his award-winning Hannah Smith series. He has also had four collections of his columns for Outside magazine and elsewhere published. In 2002, a one-hour documentary film called The Gift of the Game, about Randy’s trip to Cuba to find the remnants of the Little League teams founded by Ernest Hemingway in the days before Castro, won the “Best of the Fest” award from the 2002 Woods Hole Film Festival, then was bought by PBS and broadcast station by station in the spring and summer of 2003.
White has been awarded the Conch Republic Prize for Literature, as well as the John D. Macdonald Award for Literary Excellency. He is one of only four writers named as an Editor At Large by prestigious Outside magazine (Jon Krakauer, Hampton Sides and Tim Cahill are the others). In 2011, White was named a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Society. A fishing and nature enthusiast, he has also written extensively for National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, Playboy and Men’s Health.
He lives on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he was a light-tackle fishing guide for many years, and spends much of his free time windsurfing, playing baseball, and hanging out at Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille.
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Joe Rothstein
Joe Rothstein – Author and Political Strategist
“Must read political thriller of 2022”
In his words:
Can democratic government provide the answers? That’s the question at the core of “Menace.”
Three decades ago, a meeting at Kyoto, Japan confirmed the threat of a warming planet and produced a plan for dealing with it. Three decades later, with unprecedented heat, fire, storm, flood, drought, and climate-related migration accelerating even beyond the Kyoto forecasts, governments still have not responded in a manner equal to the threat.Eight decades ago, atomic bombs were used in warfare. The danger of their use again has not receded. More nations have them stockpiled. Delivery systems remain trigger-ready, and with delivery speeds now approaching hypersonic levels.
Even a technology seemingly as benign as the Internet has been transformed into the beating heart of political turmoil and repression.
I wrote The Moment of Menace and its prequel, The Salvation Project to imagine these threats in the context of fiction. But the question addressed is our reality. How does democracy survive in this age of advanced science?
The irony is that aside from nuclear weapons, much of what is being created can contribute to a golden age—a better life for all who come after us. Far from being bleak, the future can be glorious. Can it be both glorious and remain the democratic system most of us cherish? That’s the question The Moment of Menace addresses.
