Carter Wilson's Making It Up

Emily Jon Tobias is an award-winning writer whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been featured in literary journals such as Santa Clara Review, Flying South Literary Journal, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and more. Her debut collection MONARCH: STORIES won the American Book Fest International Book Award and an International Impact Book Award. Emily is a mentor in the PEN Pr...

Pamela Statz grew up in Wisconsin and attended UW Madison, earning degrees in Journalism and History. She’s worked in media and advertising in San Francisco and Portland for Lucasfilm, WIRED, Nike, and Wieden+Kennedy. Thorn City is her first novel. Among other things, Pam and Carter discuss Pam’s experiences with writing classes, considering self publishing, and writing a book with multiple POVs....

Alex Kenna is a prosecutor, writer, and amateur painter. Before law school, Alex studied painting and art history at Penn.  She also worked as a freelance art critic and culture writer. Alex’s debut novel, What Meets the Eye , was nominated for a Shamus Award for best first PI novel. Kirkus Reviews called it a “righteous, painful debut,” and Bookpage called her “a master in the making.”  Among oth...

Georgia Jeffries is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction, and has been honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize. She worked as a journalist for American Film before writing and producing Cagney & Lacey, China Beach, and Sisters. Her short stories have appeared in national suspense anthologies, and she has also written biograp...

Rebecca McKanna is an associate professor of English at the University of Indianapolis. Her debut novel, Don’t Forget the Girl , was nominated for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Mystery and the 2023 Strand Magazine ’s Critics Award for Best Debut Mystery, and awarded the 2024 Indiana Authors Award for Genre Fiction. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery St...

Elise Hart Kipness is a television sports reporter turned crime fiction writer. In addition to reporting for Fox Sports Network, Elise was a reporter at New York’s WNBC-TV, News 12 Long Island, and the Associated Press, covering events including the Olympics, NBA and NCAA Championships, and the US Open. She is the President of Sisters in Crime Connecticut, and a member of the Board of Directors of...

Brad Parks is an international bestselling author, and the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels have been translated into 16 languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major pre-publication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalis...

Edward Hamlin is a fiction writer and composer of music for acoustic guitar. Edward’s NIGHT IN ERG CHEBBI was selected by Karen Russell as winner of the 2015 Iowa Short Fiction Award and went on to win the Colorado Book Award. Other honors have included a Nelson Algren Award, a Nelligan Prize, an NCW Short Story Prize, a Top of the Mountain Novel Prize and a Hawthornden Fellowship. His composition...

Libby Cudmore is the author of Negative Girl and The Big Rewind , as well as the Wade & Jacks P.I. series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Tough . Her short fiction has appeared in numerous places including The Dark, Smokelong Quarterly, Shotgun Honey, and more. She is the 2018 recipient of the Oregon Writer’s Colony prize, the 2023 Shamus award for be...

Jen Ruiz is a lawyer turned full-time travel blogger. A multiple bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and national award-winning travel journalist, she has been featured in The Washington Post, Forbes, and ABC News. Jen has been named a Latina Travel Expert by Mitu and Top 40 Under 40 by the Naples Herald. She is the solo female traveler behind Jen on a Jet Plane. Among other things, Jen and Carter d...

Gina DeMillo Wagner is an award-winning journalist and author. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Memoir Magazine, Modern Loss, Self, Outside, Writer’s Digest, and other publications. She is a Yaddo Fellow, a winner of the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award, and her memoir was longlisted for the 2022 SFWP Literary prize. Gina has a master’s degree in journalism and...

Barbara Feigin is an advertising executive and World War II refugee, having fled with her parents from Nazi Germany as a young child in 1940. She attended Whitman College, then completed a graduate program in business run jointly by Harvard Business School and Radcliffe Graduate School. She had a 30-year career in advertising, mostly with Grey Advertising, and in 2017 she was named one of the cent...

Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novels The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister , both published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the U.S. and in dozens of other countries. The Marsh King’s Daughter was named one of the best books of 2017 by iBooks and many other booksellers and reviewers, and released in 2023 by Li...

Lisa Gardner is a #1 New York Times bestselling thriller novelist. Her internationally acclaimed novels have been published across 30 countries. She’s had four books become TV movies (At the Midnight Hour; The Perfect Husband; The Survivors Club; Hide). Her novel, The Neighbor, won Best Hardcover Novel from the International Thriller Writers, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle in France. She...

​​Erin E. Adams is a first-generation Haitian American writer and theater artist. She received her BA with honors in literary arts from Brown University, her MFA in acting from The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program, and her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is an award-winning playwright and actor, and also the author of One of You a...

J.D. Barker (Jonathan Dylan Barker) is an international bestselling American author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural. He has collaborated several times with James Patterson. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, sold in more than 150 countries, and optioned f...

Lauren Thoman writes speculative fiction for teens and adults. Her debut novel, I'll Stop the World , was selected for publication in 2023 by six-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling through her eponymous imprint, Mindy's Book Studio. Lauren's pop culture writing has also appeared in numerous online outlets including Parade and Vulture . Her second novel, You Shouldn’t Be Here , was relea...

Elka Ray is a Canadian/UK author, and a former journalist and travel writer, who writes fiction for adults and children. She is the author of the romantic mysteries Divorce is Murder , Killer Coin , and Hanoi Jane , and is also the author of her newest Women’s Noir, A Friend Indeed . She has also written a collection of short crime and ghost stories set in Southeast Asia, What You Don’t Know .   ...

Award-winning novelist, writing coach, and manuscript editor John DeDakis is a former editor on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." DeDakis is the author of six mystery-suspense-thriller novels. John is a former White House correspondent and regularly leads writing workshops at literary centers and writers’ conferences. He is also the host of the video podcast “One-to-One...

Lori Roy is an award-winning novelist. Her debut novel, Bent Road , was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Until She Comes Home was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. Let Me Die in His Footsteps was named one of the best fifteen mystery novels of 2015 by Oline Cogdill and received the 2016 Edgar A...

Mary Bly, writing under the pen name Eloisa James, is a tenured Shakespeare professor at Fordham University who also writes best-selling Regency and Georgian romance novels. Her novels are published in 30 countries and have sold approximately 7 million copies worldwide. She also wrote a bestselling memoir about the year her family spent in France, Paris in Love . Among other things, Mary and Carte...

Kendra Elliot has landed on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list multiple times and is the award-winning author of the Bone Secrets and Callahan & McLane series, the Mercy Kilpatrick novels, and the Columbia River novels. She's a three-time winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award, an International Thriller Writers Award finalist, and an RT Award finalist.  Melinda Leigh is a #1 Wall Stre...

Erica Wright is the author of eight novels, including her newest novel Hollow Bones , a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure . Her essay collection Snake was released as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her mystery Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. She is the author of five other books, including a couple poetry colle...

Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author. He has served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America, and was recently named a Grand Master of MWA. He is the author of more than forty novels, three collections of short stories and a nonfiction law book, and a lyricist of a country-western album. Isabella Maldonado is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and a g...

Marc Guggenheim is an Emmy-award winning screenwriter, television producer, comic book writer, and novelist. He is best known as the creator of the television series Eli Stone (2008–2009), Arr o w (2012–2020), and Legends of Tomorrow (2016–2022), executive producer of the animated series Tales of Arcadia (2016–2021), as well as the writer of the films Green Lantern and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monste...