NHBF Author: Elaine Sexton

Elaine Sexton is a poet, critic, and educator. Her latest work, The Post Office: An Opera in Poems, premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Spruce Peak Arts, Stowe, Vermont in 2026. The libretto was also published in book form in tandem with the opera. Her five previous books of poetry include: Site Specific: New & Selected Poems (2025), Drive (2022), Prospect/Refuge (2015), Causeway (2015), and Sleuth (2003). She is a 2026 NYSCA (New York State Council for the Arts) grantee for her work on the opera, as well as a 2025 Mellon Foundation funded Opera Fusion: New Works residency, and a 2023
Hermitage Artist Retreat residency. 

Her poems, art reviews, book reviews, and works in visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks and websites including American Poetry Review, Art in America, Five Points, Poetry, Poetry International, Ploughshares, O! the Oprah Magazine, Poetry Daily, and the 50th Anniversary issues of Provincetown Arts. She teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, and has been guest faculty at New York University and in the graduate writing program at City College (CUNY). She is regularly invited to teach poetry, bookmaking, and art writing at arts and writing programs and centers in the U.S. and abroad, among them Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Arts Workshop International (Assisi). She teaches private workshops in her studio and online.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.  

NHBF Author: Kate Schoedinger

Kate Schoedinger recently retired after forty joyful years teaching in Bedford, New Hampshire where she learned daily from the curiosity, humor, and persistence of her students. Kate holds an M.Ed., from Antioch of New England, an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BA from Wittenberg University. Kate lives in Weare, NH and is also a founding board member of the New Hampshire Book Festival.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.

NHBF Author: Shannon Sanders

Shannon Sanders is the author of the linked short story collection Company, which won the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, was named a best book of 2023 by Publishers Weekly and Debutiful, and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including One Story, Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and has received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026. 

Book of the Week (9/28/2026)

Death By Molasses by Kate Schoedinger (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2026)

Middle grade historical fiction novel, Death By Molasses, follows Luca, a child survivor of the 1919 Great Boston Molasses Flood, who dares to speak out against greedy powerhouses, to avenge his sister’s death. His testimony becomes a spark that ultimately contributes to the creation of modern workplace protections, now known as OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Kate Schoedinger recently retired after forty joyful years teaching in the Bedford, New Hampshire school district where she learned daily from the curiosity, humor, and persistence of her students. Kate holds an M.Ed., from Antioch of New England, an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BA from Wittenberg University. Kate grew up in Bexley, Ohio as a dedicated Ohio State Buckeyes fan before relocating to Weare, NH on Lake Horace thanks to marrying the waterski counselor at Camp Kawanhee for Boys, the summer camp her parents directed for over thirty years. She serves as the secretary on the board of the George and Raymond Frank Foundation, which operates Camp Kawanhee and is also a founding board member of the New Hampshire Book Festival.

Join Kate at Gibson's Bookstore on Thursday, October 8, 2026 at 6:30 pm where she will present her new book!

NHBF Author: Rebecca Rule

Rebecca Rule gathers and tells stories. Her storytelling programs, many sponsored by NH Humanities, take her all over the state (and sometimes beyond) to libraries, town halls, schools, senior centers, and other gathering places. She’s the author of many books for children and adults, including NH Trivia; That Reminds Me of a Funny Story; The Iciest, Diciest, Scariest Sled Ride Ever!, illustrated by Jennifer Thermes; Moved and Seconded: NH Town Meeting; and N is for NH. Her new picture book is Who Loves Blueberries?, illustrated by Arpita Choudhury. For NHPBS she hosts Our Hometown. Each show in the series features a different New Hampshire town, its stories told by those who live there and love it best.
Her daughter, Adi Rule, is also a writer.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.  

NHBF Author: Adi Rule

Adi Rule is the author of the Ghost Chickens series (Tundra), Nell and the Netherbeast (Andrews McMeel), Why Would I Lie? and Hearts of Ice (Scholastic), and The Hidden Twin and Strange Sweet Song, which won the 2016 NH Writers Project literary award for Outstanding Young Adult Book and the Vermont College of Fine Arts Houghton Mifflin/Clarion Prize (St Martin’s Press). Adi has led workshops throughout New England for many organizations, including 826 Boston, the NH Writers Project, and the VCFA Young Writers Network. Her work has appeared in Hunger Mountain journal of the arts, NH Pulp Fiction anthologies (Plaidswede), and New Hampshire Magazine. Adi is a member of the faculty of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing program at Lasell University.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026. 

NHBF Author: Christine Pride

Christine Pride is a writer, editor and long-time publishing veteran where she held editorial posts
at various Big Five imprints and published many bestselling and critically acclaimed novels and
memoirs over her twenty-year career. She is also the author of four novels: three with Jo Piazza: We Are Not Like Them (a Good Morning America Book Club Pick), You Were Always Mine, and I Never Knew You At All, as well as her solo debut, All The Men I’ve Loved Again which was an instant USA Today bestseller. In addition to writing, she does select editorial work, proposal/content development, and teaching and coaching.

This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 2-3, 2026.