Azar Nafisi is the critically acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a long-standing number one New York Times bestseller published in thirty-two languages. The title is an incisive exploration of the transformative powers of fiction in a world of tyranny.  The book won numerous awards including one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London). (more…)

Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York Times bestselling author whose writing spans children, teens, and adults. Combined, her books have sold more than 8 million copies. Her new book, SHOUT, a memoir-in-verse about surviving sexual assault at the age of thirteen and a manifesto for the #MeToo era, has received widespread critical acclaim and was Anderson’s’s eighth New York Times bestselling book. (more…)

Ross Gay is a 2015 National Book Award finalist and author of three books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His most recent work, The Book of Delights, was named one of the Best Books of 2019 by the Washington Independent Review of Books and Shelf Awareness, as well as one of the best reviewed books of 2019 by Lit Hub. This book of lyric essays was written over one tumultuous year, and celebrates the beauty of the natural world and the small joys of life, without dismissing the harsher complexities and realities of living in America as an African American man. (more…)