Author2Author

Send us Fan MailSgt. Rasul T. Freelain (Ret.) served twenty years with the Oak Park Police Department in Illinois. He is certified by CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) International as a coordinator and teaches for the Illinois CIT Training Unit. Currently he is working to bring increased awareness to the problem of child-to-parent violence and abuse (CPVA). 

Send us Fan MailMarie Hoy-Kenny’s work has been published in several literary publications, including Shadow Lab, trampset, Okay Donkey, and FlashBack Fiction. Marie’s debut young adult novel, The Girls from Hush Cabin, was published by Blackstone Publishing in 2023, and her debut picture book, This Plant is Not Boring, was published in April 2025 by Orca Book Publishers. Something like Desire is Marie’s debut adult title.

Send us Fan MailLINDA KASS began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. Along with her forthcoming novel, World News from Waverley High (September 2026), she is the author of three previous works of historical fiction: Tasa’s Song (2016), A Ritchie Boy (2020), and Bessie (2023). A longtime civic leader, she is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Central Ohio. Linda lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband, Frank; they have four children, six grandchildren, and a labradoodle named Wally. Find her online at lindakass.com, @lindakass, LindaKassAuthor and The heart of the story | Ohio State Alumni Magazine

Send us Fan MailSarah Braunstein's novel, Bad Animals, was published by W. W. Norton in March 2024 and described by Claire Luchette in the New York Times Book Review as  "...a red-hot poker that skewers the limits of the white imagination…[A] sharp-witted, ravishing novel.” Sarah is also the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W. W. Norton), winner of the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Fiction. The novel was a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and was an Oprah Magazine Top Ten Pick of the Month. Bitch magazine said it's a novel "akin to the film Magnolia (if Saul Bellow had written the novelization)." Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, The Harvard Review, The Cincinnati Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, The Sun, Nylon Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, and in other publications. She co-wrote a play, String Theory: Three Greek Myths Woven Together, with Michael Barakiva and Amy Boyce Holtcamp.  Sarah has been the recipient of a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. For several years she served on the National Selection Panel of the National YoungArts Foundation. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. She is associate professor of English and creative writing at Colby College.

Send us Fan MailCaroline Hallemann is the Digital Director of Town & Country magazine, where she writes about culture, society, entertainment, and the world of the rich and powerful. Her work has often focused on the British monarchy, and the closest thing America has to a royal family: the Kennedys. She lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Send us Fan MailJill Rosenberg is the author of NOW I'M PHOTOGENIC AND OTHER STORIES I TELL MYSELF (May 5, 2026; Black Lawrence Press), which is the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award. She a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA Program at the University of Montana, and her fiction has been published by the Kenyon Review, Swamp Pink, Black Warrior Review, and other journals. She currently lives and writes in Montclair, New Jersey, where she also works with rescued cats, practices practicing Buddhism and teaches creative writing at Montclair State University. You can visit her online at jillrosenberg.me.

Send us Fan MailClaire Boyles is a former sustainable farmer and a 2022 Whiting Award winner in fiction. Her debut novel, Appraisals, about a family of small-scale farmers during the 2008 Great Recession, is forthcoming in August 2026. She lives in northern Colorado 

Send us Fan MailSARA LIPPMANN is the author of the novels Hidden River and Lech and the story collections Doll Palace and Jerks. Her fiction has won the Lilith Fiction Prize and has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, The Chicago Review of Books, The Lit Hub and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she co-edited the anthology Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible (SUNY Press). She received a BA from Brown and an MFA from The New School, and has been teaching creative writing for over 20 years to people of all ages. She is a founding member of the Writing Co-Lab, an artist-run online teaching cooperative, and the editor-in-chief of Epiphany magazine. You can visit her online at saralippmann.com.

Send us Fan MailHilary Plattner is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her debut memoir, The Momma Puzzle, was shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and named a finalist for the Wandering Aengus and Trail to Table Book Awards. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and has taught writing at The New School. Previously, she founded and directed Brooklyn Writers, a community-based writing program. Her writing has been published in numerous literary journals, including Allegro, Cider Press Review, Fence, GSU Review, Gulf Coast, Synkroniciti and The Ledge. 

Send us Fan MailSusan Wiggs is the author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and the recent New York Times bestsellers The Lost and Found Bookshop, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, and Family Tree. Her books celebrate the power of love, the timeless bonds of family and the fascinating nuances of human nature. She is an international bestselling, award-winning author, with millions of copies of her books in print in numerous countries and languages. According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with “refreshingly honest emotion,” and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is “one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.” Booklist characterizes her books as “real and true and unforgettable.” Wiggs lives with her husband on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound 

Send us Fan MailOriginally hailing from Leeds, Tom Hindle lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and daughter. He is the author of A Fatal Crossing, The Murder Game, Murder on Lake Garda, Death in the Arctic, and A Killer in Paradise—all of which were inspired by masters of the crime genre such as Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz. Tom is hard at work on his next murder mystery. 

Send us Fan MailLiz Lazarus is an engineer by education, a consultant and business owner from experience, and an author given her passion to tell stories. Dawn Before Darkness is her fourth novel, following Free of Malice, Plea for Justice, and Shades of Silence. Learn more at www.lizlazarus.com. 

Send us Fan MailRobert B. McCaw, a graduate of Georgetown University, served as a lieutenant in the US Army and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a partner in a major international law firm based in Washington, DC, and New York City. He lives in New York.

Send us Fan MailManil Suri is the internationally acclaimed author of The Death of Vishnu and other books. His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages and received several honors, including winning the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and being longlisted for the Booker Prize. He is a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and lives with his husband in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

Send us Fan MailAndrea Leeb is a writer and advocate living in Venice Beach, California. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals, including Litro Magazine, the Potomac Review, Text Power Telling magazine, and HerStry. In 2025, she was a non-fiction finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books literary awards program. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, a JD from the Cardozo School of Law, and a BSN from Georgetown University. Previously, Andrea worked as both an attorney and as a registered nurse. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and Stuart House. She dedicates her time to advocating for survivors of sexual assault, mentoring young women from post-conflict and climate-challenged countries, and writing. Such a Pretty Picture: A Memoir is Andrea’s first full-length book.

Send us Fan MailMiranda Shulman attended Bard College, where she majored in human rights. Before pursuing a career in publishing, she worked at Planned Parenthood. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and still lives there. Harmless is her first novel 

Send us Fan MailJess Cannon is the pseudonym of a failed academic who never made tenure but still manages to sleep great at night. She spends her days writing award-winning journalism and her nights plotting fictional murders. She lives with her family and an irascible blue heeler in Austin, Texas, where her funky community is a constant source of joy (and writing material). She has a PhD in literature from the University of Texas, teaches fiction and nonfiction at Wilkes University, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Teen Vogue, among others. She also co-hosts “The Beautiful and Banned” podcast with Christine Renee Miller.

Send us Fan MailMelinda Leigh is the #1 Amazon Charts and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Echo Road, the She Can series, the Midnight series, the Scarlet Falls series, the Morgan Dane series, the Bree Taggert series, the Olivia Cruz series, and numerous short stories, as well as the Rogue series novellas and the Widow’s Island series novellas. Melinda has garnered numerous writing awards, earned two RITA nominations, and been an International Thriller Award nominee for Best First Novel. She also holds a second-degree black belt in Kenpo karate and has taught women’s self-defense. 

Send us Fan MailCollege admissions expert Jill Margaret Shulman is the author of College Essay Confidence and College Admissions Cracked. The founder of In Other Words, a college essay coaching service, she counsels students applying to a wide array of colleges and has evaluated thousands of applications for top college admissions offices. Shulman has taught writing at The New School, City University of New York, and NYU and has been featured in Forbes, LA Times, The New York Times, and Parents. She combines her experience as a teacher, writer, admissions insider, and empathetic parent to ease anxiety for students and families. 

Send us Fan MailPhilip Kenney is an author and psychotherapist. His most recent work is a novel entitled, The Mercy Dialogues. That work examines the power of dialogue, in the service of love, to bridge seemingly impossible divisions between people. Prior to that, in 2022, his chapbook of haiku entitled, Only This Step, was published by Finishing Line Press. In 2018, his first non-fiction book, The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being and Creativity, was a finalist for The Red City Review Non-Fiction Book of the Year. That work was written to support writers with the emotional vulnerabilities they face living a creative life. On occasion, Philip gives workshops based on The Writer’s Crucible at The Attic Institute in Portland.Those workshops enable authors to understand and work with the emotions that complicate the creative process. In 2018, his essay, The Rebirth of Masculinity: What We Can Learn from Harvey Weinstein and Co. was published in issue #7 of The Timberline Review. 

Send us Fan MailBill welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding to the show. Paul is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers, and Enon. He is director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island, New York. His latest novel is The Other Eden.

Send us Fan MailBill welcomes author and teacher, and storyteller Matthew Dicks to the show. Matthew is the author of Someday Is Today and nine other books. A bestselling novelist, nationally recognized storyteller, and award-winning elementary schoolteacher, he teaches storytelling and communications at universities, corporate workplaces, and community organizations. Dicks has won multiple Moth GrandSLAM story competitions and, together with his wife, created the organization Speak Up to help others share their stories. They also cohost the Speak Up Storytelling podcast.