NHBF Author: Alexandra Villasante

Alexandra Villasante has always loved telling stories—though not always with words. She has a BFA in Painting and an MA in Combined Media (that’s art school speak for making work out of anything). Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, Alex has the privilegio of dreaming in both English and Spanish.
Her latest novel, Fireblooms, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from Kirkus and Booklist. It was selected as one of NPR’s Books We Love 2025. Alex’s debut YA novel, The Grief Keeper, was a Fall 2019 Junior Library Guild Gold Selection and winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s Literature/Young Adult Fiction. She's a contributor to several Young Adult short story anthologies including, Our Shadows Have Claws, Relit: 16 Latinx Remixes of Classic Stories and We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters Angels and Other Creatures. Alex is a co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival and of the LKBF Latinx Storytellers Conference. When she’s not writing, planning or painting, Alex works for Boyds Mills, formerly known as the Highlights Foundation. 

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: S. J. Taylor

S. J. Taylor writes stories steeped in folklore and magic, where young protagonists tackle big adventures and bigger questions. Although she grew up in Arizona's desert, her heart yearns for the Nordic lands. When she's not writing, she can often be found knitting yet another sweater (sweater weather is the best weather). She lives in Connecticut with her family.

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: Jacquelyn Stolos

Jacquelyn Stolos is the author of the novels Edendale and Asterwood. She holds an MFA in fiction from New York University where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. Jacquelyn has won fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the Community of Writers. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Bodega Magazine, No Tokens, Joyland and more. She is the co-founder of Los Angeles’s Something Something Reading Series.

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: Dan Simon

Dan Simon is the founder and editor-in-chief of Seven Stories Press. He is the co-author, with Jack Hoffman, of Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman and translator of Van Gogh: Self Portraits by Pascal Bonafoux. Ashland is his debut novel. He lives in New York and New Hampshire.

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: 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. 

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.  

NHBF Author: Keith O'Brien

Keith O'Brien is a New York Times bestselling author and the winner of the 2025 PEN
America award for best biography. O’Brien’s books include Heartland, Charlie Hustle, Fly
Girls, Paradise Falls, and Outside Shot. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York
Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street
Journal, and Rolling Stone, and his stories have also appeared on National Public Radio and This
American Life. A native of Ohio, he now lives in New Hampshire.

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: Rena J. Mosteirin

Rena J. Mosteirin is the author of Disaster Tourism (BOA Editions, 2025), Experiment 116 (counterpath Press, 2021), and the chapbooks half-fabulous whales (Little Dipper, 2019) and nick trail’s thumb, a novella that won the Kore Press Short Fiction Award, judged by Lydia Davis. Mosteirin is co-author, with James E. Dobson, of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) and Perceptron (punctum books, 2025). She is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has been published in The New England Review, The Poetry Society of America, The Common, The Rumpus, New York Magazine, Meetinghouse, The Southampton Review, no tokens, The Puritan and Elsewhere, a Journal of Place. Mosteirin teaches at Dartmouth College, and owns Left Bank Books, a used bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire.

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: Jennifer Militello

Jennifer Militello is the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is the author of the poetry/essay collection Identifying the Pathogen, named a finalist for the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative
Fiction Prize, The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021), and the memoir Knock Wood,
winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous collections
of poetry. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry
Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Tin House. She teaches
in the MFA program at New England College.

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 McGovern

Kate McGovern is the author of the young adult novels Rules for 50/50 Chances and Fear of Missing Out, which received starred reviews, as well as the middle grade novels Welcome Back, Maple Mehta-Cohen, which was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and its sequel, Maple for the People. She has worked in schools and education nonprofits in Boston, London, and New York City, including at the Harlem Children's Zone, where she served as a reading specialist and directed Shakespeare productions with middle schoolers. Kate lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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: Mindy McGinnis

Mindy McGinnis is an Edgar Award-winning novelist who writes across multiple genres, including post-apocalyptic, historical, thriller, contemporary, mystery, and fantasy. While her settings may change, you can always count on Mindy’s books to deliver grit, truth, and an unflinching look at humanity and the world around us.

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: Nick Lund

Nick Lund is a nature writer who works for Maine Audubon. His writing on birds and nature has appeared in Audubon magazine, National Parks magazine, Slate.com, the Washington Post, the Maine Sportsman, the Portland Phoenix, Down East magazine, and others, as well as the Birdist blog. He is a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law and worked in federal energy policy in Washington, DC, before returning to Maine with his wife and son.

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: Michael Lowenthal

Michael Lowenthal is the author of a story collection, Sex with Strangers, and four novels: The Same Embrace, Avoidance, Charity Girl (a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” and a Washington Post “Top Fiction of 2007” pick), and The Paternity Test (an Indie Next selection and a Lambda Literary Award finalist). His shorter work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, The Southern Review, and many anthologies. The recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Mass Cultural Council, he has taught creative writing at Boston College and Hampshire College, and as the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at Leipzig University in Germany. For more than twenty years he was a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. Lowenthal’s most recent book is a memoir-in-essays, Place Envy, published in February 2026. He lives in Boston and Pittsburgh.

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: Cait Levin

Cait Levin is an innovative educator and award-winning author. Kirkus called her debut novel Imposter, “an inspiring, unapologetically feminist takedown of misogyny in STEM culture.” Cait earned a BA from Barnard College and an MA from Middlebury College. When she isn’t looking for ways to help folks learn and build confidence, she likes to read, cook, play video games, and write fiction.

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: Rajani LaRocca

Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in Massachusetts, where she practices medicine and writes award-winning books for young readers, including the Newbery Honor–winning novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole. She’s always been an omnivorous reader, and now she is an omnivorous writer of novels and picture books, fiction and nonfiction, in prose and poetry. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she lives outside Boston with her family.

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: Andrew Krivak

Andrew Krivak is an award-winning writer whose books include Mule Boy; The Bear, a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection; and the freestanding novels of the Dardan Trilogy: The Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize; The Signal Flame, a Chautauqua Prize finalist; and Like the Appearance of Horses, a Library Journal “Best Book of the Year” and Indie Next List for Reading Groups selection. He is a discussion facilitator with the Family Connections Center, New Hampshire Department of Corrections, and visiting lecturer on English at Harvard University. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

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.