NHBF Author: Hester Kaplan

Hester Kaplan is an award-winning writer of story collections, novels, and the memoir/biography, Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography, published in 2025 and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her story collection, The Edge of Marriage, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and her work has been widely published and anthologized, including in The Best American Short Stories series. She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Awards and was named a Quarry Farm Fellow by the Center for Mark Twain Studies for Twice Born. With over 30 years of teaching experience, Hester runs workshops and writing retreats, and works with writers at all stages of development. Recent presentations and features include an essay in Electric Lit, a talk on memoir and biography at the 2025 Boston Book Festival, and an interview on NPR’s Here & Now. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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: Carla Kaplan

Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She serves on the board of Biographers International Organization and is a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. The author of eight books—including Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, both New York Times Notable Books—she has also written for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, and The Nation. Her latest book, Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, traces the British aristocrat-turned-American Communist and muckraker with fresh insight. Kaplan earned her PhD in English from Northwestern University and divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod.

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: Eloisa James

Eloisa James has published over 30 historical romances, many of which have hit the bestseller lists. She also wrote a bestselling memoir, Paris in Love, as well as a contemporary novel, Lizzie and Dante. Her books are published in 28 languages and 30 countries, from Slovakia to Sweden. Worldwide, she has approximately 7 million books published in print or electronically. She lives in New York City and Florence, Italy. After graduating from Harvard University, Eloisa earned a M. Phil. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Yale and eventually became a Shakespeare professor, publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press. Her "double life” as a professor and romance writer is a source of fascination to the media and her readers. In her professorial guise, she's written a New York Times op-ed defending the romance genre, as well as articles published everywhere from women's magazines such as More to journals such as the Romance Writers' Report. 

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 Hosford

Kate Hosford is the author of seven picture books and two poetry collections, garnering awards such as an American Library Association Notable Book, a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book. Her books have been published in eight languages. She is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts where she earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her most recent book, You and I are Stars and Night, was published by Simon & Schuster this year. Kate lives in Brooklyn with her family and is represented by Victoria Wells Arms at HG Literary.

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: Edwin Hill

Edwin Hill’s critically acclaimed crime novels include the standalone thrillers What Happened Next, Who to Believe (Kirkus Reviews Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2024), and The Secrets We Share, and three novels featuring librarian Hester Thursby: Watch Her, The Missing Ones, and Little Comfort. He has been nominated for Edgar and Agatha Awards, featured in Us Magazine, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Library Journal, and was recognized as one of “Six Crime Writers to Watch” in Mystery Scene magazine. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.

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: T. Greenwood

T. Greenwood is the Lambda Literary Award–nominated author of Bodies of Water and fifteen other novels. Two of her books have been Amazon Editor’s Picks, and six have made the Indie Next list. Keeping Lucy was a Target Book Club book, and Rust & Stardust was a Library Reads selection. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She and her husband split their time between San Diego, CA, and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

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 (9/7/2026)

Calmly on the Waters: Seasonal Essays From Monadnock by Jarvis Coffin (Bauhan Publishing, 2026)

Calmly on the Waters is Jarvis Coffin’s first collected volume of essays. For more than a decade, as co-owner with his wife of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, The Hancock Inn (now, The Inn at Hancock), Coffin offered a steady sense of place in conversations with travelers from around the world, and in popular, monthly pieces sent to the inn’s guest list.

In this collection he gathers a selection of essays rooted in life beside a pond in the woods of southern New Hampshire. Quiet, attentive, and occasionally humorous, these essays invite readers to slow down and observe a world reachable “on two feet, or by canoe, or by car, with no more than a tank of gas.” Written against the backdrop of deep winters, uncertain springs, brief summers, and colorful autumns, Calmly on the Waters is organized by season, following the rhythms that shape daily life in rural New England. --Author's website

About the author:

Jarvis Coffin writes fiction and essays on rural life from southern New Hampshire. In addition to his bi-weekly column in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, his work has been published in Jimson Weed, Down in the Dirt, Swanannoa Review, ellipsis...language and art, and the Glint Literary Journal (forthcoming). He is the former co-owner with his wife of New Hampshire's oldest inn, The Hancock Inn, and, for thirty years, was a media and advertising sales executive with leading magazines, newspapers, and co-founder and CEO of internet ad sales pioneer, Burst Media.

Join Jarvis at the following locations where he will be discussing his new book:

September 11, 2026- Bob’s Chocolate Cafe in Francestown, NH, 6:30 p.m. 

September 12, 2026- The Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough, NH, 11:00 a.m.

September 19th, 2026- Bound Together Books, Nashua, NH, 1:30 p.m.