Attica Locke is the author of the 2018 Edgar Award winner Bluebird, Bluebird; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was long-listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She is also a television writer and producer, most recently for When They See Us and the upcoming adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. A native of Houston, Locke lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Ben H. Winters is the New York Times bestselling author of Underground Airlines and the Last Policeman trilogy. The second novel in the trilogy, Countdown City, was an NPR Best Book of 2013 and the winner of the Philip K. Dick award. The Last Policeman was the recipient of the 2012 Edgar Award, and was also named one of the Best Books of 2012 by Amazon.com and Slate. Ben lives with his family in Los Angeles, CA.

Christopher Reich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Take, Numbered Account, Rules of Deception, Rules of Vengeance, Rules of Betrayal, and many other thrillers. His novel The Patriots Club won the International Thriller Writers award for Best Novel in 2006. He lives in Encinitas, California.

C.J. Sansom is the bestselling author of the critically-acclaimed Matthew Shardlake series, as well as the runaway #1 international bestsellers Dominion and Winter in Madrid. He lives in Sussex, England.

Dan Simmons is the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of several novels, includingthe New York Times bestsellers Olympos and The Terror. He lives in Colorado.

Kent Anderson is a U.S. Special Forces veteran who served in Vietnam and a former police officer in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. With an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, he has taught college-level English and written screenplays. His two other novels, Night Dogs and Green Sun, both feature Hanson. Anderson may be the only person in U.S. history to have won two NEA grants for creative writing as well as two Bronze Stars. He lives in New Mexico.

David Shafer is a graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School. He has lived in Argentina and Dublin, and has been a journalist, sometimes a carpenter, once a taxi driver and briefly a flack for an NGO. He now lives in Portland with his wife, daughter, and son.

Don Mann (CWO3, USN) is the author of the national bestseller Inside SEAL Team Six and a former Navy SEAL. He lives in Virginia.

Ralph Pezzullo is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning playwright, screenwriter and journalist. His books include Jawbreaker (with CIA operative Gary Berntsen) and Zero Footprint (with military contractor Simon Chase).

Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling author of over thirty novels and three collections of short stories. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages. His first novel featuring Lincoln Rhyme, The Bone Collector, was made into a major motion picture starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He’s received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world. He lives in North Carolina.

Joe Ide is of Japanese American descent. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Joe’s favorite books were the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. The idea that a person could face the world and vanquish his enemies with just his intelligence fascinated him. Joe went on to earn a graduate degree and had several careers before writing his debut novel, IQ, inspired by his early experiences and his love of Sherlock Holmes. Joe lives in Santa Monica, California.

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar-award winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received nine Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) is an American satirical novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist. His debut novel, Catch-22, introduced the concept of a catch-22 to the English lexicon, and became an anti-war classic during the U.S. conflict in Vietnam.

Kathleen Kent is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated The Dime, as well as three bestselling historical novels: The Heretic’s Daughter, The Traitor’s Wife, and The Outcasts. Kent lives in Dallas, TX.

Kent Anderson is a U.S. Special Forces veteran who served in Vietnam and a former police officer in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. With an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, he has taught college-level English and written screenplays. His two novels prior to Green Sun, Sympathy for the Devil and the New York Times Notable Book Night Dogs, both feature Hanson. Anderson may be the only person in U.S. history to have won two NEA grants for creative writing as well as two Bronze Stars. He lives in New Mexico.

Lauren Beukes writes novels, comics and screeplays. She’s the author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller Broken Monsters, as well as The Shining Girls, about a time traveling serial killer, Zoo City, a phantasmagorical Joburg noir and winner of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award, and the neo-political thriller Moxyland. She worked as a journalist and as show runner on one of the South Africa’s biggest animated TV shows, directed an award-winning documentary and wrote the New York Times bestselling graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Linwood Barclay is the New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of fourteen critically acclaimed novels, including Broken Promise; No Safe House; A Tap on the Window; Trust Your Eyes, which has been optioned for film; Never Look Away, which has been optioned for television; and No Time for Goodbye. He lives in Toronto, ON.

Malcolm Mackay’s novels have been nominated for the Edgar Awards’ Best Paperback Original, the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. How a Gunman Says Goodbye won the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award. Mackay was born in Stornoway on Scotland’s Isle of Lewis, where he still lives.

Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan have written the screenplays for Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, and The Collector, which Dunstan also directed. They have filmed The Collection and wrote Dimension Films’ Piranha 3DD.

Stephen Romano is an acclaimed author, screenwriter and illustrator, having written for Showtime’s Emmy-winning original series Masters Of Horror.

Michael Connelly has been a popular sportswriter in the New England area for over a decade, and his Boston Top Ten blog is a favorite of sports fans in the region. He’s published three books including Rebound!: Basketball, Busing, Larry Bird, and the Rebirth of Boston. He lives in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Michael Palmer, medical thriller author and physician, died unexpectedly on October 30, 2013. Michael wrote 18 novels of medical and political suspense, all international bestsellers. In addition to writing, Palmer served as an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Health Services, devoted to helping physicians troubled by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, and chemical dependency.

Matthew Palmer is a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, currently serving as the director of Multilateral Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Asian and Pacific Affairs. A life member of the Council of Foreign Relations, Matt has worked as a diplomat all over the world. While on the secretary of state’s Policy Planning staff, Matt helped design and implement the Kimberly Process for certifying African diamonds as “conflict free.”

Olen Steinhauer grew up in Virginia, and has since lived in Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachusetts, and New York. Outside the US, he’s lived in Croatia (when it was called Yugoslavia), the Czech Republic and Italy. He also spent a year in Romania on a Fulbright grant, an experience that helped inspire his first five books. He now lives in Hungary with his wife and daughter.

Philip Kerr is the author of nine widely acclaimed Bernie Gunter novels, most recently The Man Without Breath. Field Gray, the seventh in the series, was a finalist for the 2012 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel. Kerr has also been a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Fiction and he won the British Crime Writers Association’s Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction. Under the name P. B. Kerr, he is the author of the much-loved young adult series Children of the Lamp. He lives in London.

Don Mann (CWO3, USN) is the author of the national bestseller Inside SEAL Team Six and a former Navy SEAL. He lives in Virginia.

Ralph Pezzullo is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning playwright, screenwriter and journalist. His books include Jawbreaker (with CIA operative Gary Berntsen) and Zero Footprint (with military contractor Simon Chase).

R.L. Stine is one of the bestselling children’s authors in history, with more than 400 million books sold to date. In 1989, Stine created the Fear Street series, one of the bestselling young adult book series in history, with 80 million copies sold worldwide. He is also the author of the bestselling children’s series Goosebumps, which began in 1992 and has sold 300 million copies around the world.

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy. Also in the highly acclaimed Cormoran Strike crime fiction series are The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil, and Lethal White.

Dr. Robin Cook is the author of thirty previous books and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his wildly successful first novel, Coma. He divides his time between Boston and Florida.

Sarah Lotz is a novelist and screenwriter with a fondness for the macabre. She is the author of The White Road, Day Four, and The Three, and lives in Wales with her family and other animals.

Sebastian Rotella is the author of Rip Crew, The Convert’s Song, and Triple Crossing, which the New York Times Book Review named its favorite debut crime novel of 2011, as well as the nonfiction book Twilight on the Line. He is a senior reporter covering international security issues for ProPublica, a newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism in the public interest. He worked for twenty-three years for the Los Angeles Times, serving as bureau chief in Paris and Buenos Aires. His honors include a Peabody Award; Columbia University’s Dart Award and Moors Cabot Prize for Latin American coverage; the German Marshall Fund’s Weitz Prize for reporting in Europe; five Overseas Press Club Awards; The Urbino Prize of Italy, and an Emmy nomination. He was a Pulitzer finalist for international reporting in 2006.

Simon Chase is the pen name of a former member of the elite Royal Marine Commandos. He was recruited into the British Special Forces, serving in the Special Boat Squadron (SBS). While there he carried out top secret missions around the world working alongside the CIA and DEA. More recently, he has worked with a close-knit team of U.S. Special Forces operatives to provide high-level protection and intervention services for individuals, corporations and governments all over the globe.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) is an American playwright and author of many stage classics, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He also wrote poetry, essays, memoirs, and short stories.

Thomas O’Malley is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and currently teaches on the faculty of creative writing at Dartmouth College. He lives in the Boston area.