Featured Authors

Sam Weller

Two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner. Authorized biographer of legendary writer Ray Bradbury. Energetic and engaging public speaker. Fiction and nonfiction writer. . . .

Sam Weller's book, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (William Morrow) was a national bestseller and winner of the 2005 Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Biography. The companion book, Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, was published by Melville House/Stop Smiling Books in 2010.

With Mort Castle, Weller co-edited the short fiction anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2012). In 2014, Weller and Castle's graphic novel adaptation of Shadow Show was published by IDW. In 2015, Weller edited Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview as part of Melville House Publishing's critcally lauded "Last Interview" series.

Sam is the former Midwest Correspondent for Publishers Weekly magazine. His personal essays have appeared in the Paris Review, on the National Public Radio Program All Things Considered, Slate magazine and others. He is a regular blogger for the Huffington Post. His short fiction has appeared in numerous books, anthologies, literary journals, and magazines, including Printer's Row Journal, Rosebud, the Chicago Reader others. Sam is presently at work on his debut novel, an existential love story filled with Oz-ian magic and wonder.

Weller is a frequent lecturer on the life and legacy of Ray Bradbury. He has given over 350 talks worldwide. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri to two community-college professors—her mother taught reading; her father, film. Thus she spent an inordinate amount of her youth nosing through books and watching movies. She has happy memories of having A Wrinkle in Time pried from her hands at the dinner table, and also of seeing Alien, Psycho and Bonnie and Clyde at a questionable age (like, seven). It was a good childhood.

In high-school, she worked strange jobs that required her to do things like wrap and unwrap hams, or dress up as a giant yoghurt cone. A yoghurt cone who wore a tuxedo. Why the tuxedo? It was a question that would haunt her for years.

For college, she headed to the University of Kansas (go Jayhawks), where she received her undergraduate degrees in English and journalism.

After a two-year stint writing about human resources for a trade magazine in California, Flynn moved to Chicago. There she earned her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and discovered that she was way too wimpy to make it as a crime reporter.

On the other hand, she was a movie geek with a journalism degree—so she moved to New York City and joined Entertainment Weekly magazine, where she wrote happily for 10 years, visiting film sets around the world (to New Zealand for The Lord of the Rings, to Prague for The Brothers Grimm, to somewhere off the highway in Florida for Jackass: The Movie). During her last four years at EW, Flynn was the TV critic (all-time best TV show: The Wire).

Flynn’s 2006 debut novel, the literary mystery Sharp Objects, was an Edgar Award finalist and the winner of two of Britain’s Dagger Awards—the first book ever to win multiple Daggers in one year. Movie rights have been sold.

Flynn’s second novel, the 2009 New York Times bestseller Dark Places, was a New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite, Weekend TODAY Top Summer Read, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction choice. In 2015, the movie adaptation starring Charlize Theron was released.

Flynn’s third novel, Gone Girl, was an international sensation and a runaway hit that has spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists. Gone Girl was named one of the best books of the year by People Magazine and Janet Maslin at the New York Times. Nominated for both the Edgar Award and the Anthony Award for Best Novel, Flynn wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gone Girl for the big screen, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

Her newest release, The Grownup, is an Edgar Award-winning short story and an homage to the classic ghost story. This is the first time it is being published as a standalone.

Flynn’s work has been published in forty-one languages. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Brett Nolan, their children, and a giant black cat named Roy. In theory she is working on her next novel. In reality she is possibly playing Ms. Pac-Man in her basement lair.

Bobby Biedrzycki

Bobby Biedrzycki is a writer, performer, educator, and transnational human rights activist who resides in Chicago, IL. His stories, poems, and performances have appeared on pages, stages, and public spaces across the U.S. and beyond. His work is rooted in cross-disciplinary art making that focuses on creating social change. Bobby is the Curriculum and Instruction Associate in the Department of Education and Community Engagement at the Goodman Theatre, a company member of 2nd Story, and is faculty in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Excellence-in-Teaching Award. Bobby is deeply committed to collaborating with youth artists working to change the world, and is @bobbyfloats on all forms of social media.

Elizabeth Crane

Elizabeth Crane is the author of three collections of short stories, When the Messenger is Hot, All this Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter. Her work has been translated into several languages and has been featured in numerous publications including Other Voices, Nerve, Ecotone, Swink, Guernica, Coachella Review, Mississippi Review, Florida Review, Bat City Review, fivechapters, The Collagist, Make, Hobart, Rookie, Fairy Tale Review, failbetter, The Huffington Post, Eating Well, Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader and The Believer, and anthologies including Altared, The Show I’ll Never Forget, The Best Underground Fiction, Who Can Save Us Now?, Brute Neighbors and Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2008 and 2010. Her stories have been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Crane is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater company, and also been adapted for film. She teaches in the UCR-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. Her debut novel, We Only Know So Much, was published by HarperPerennial in 2012 and a feature film adaptation is currently in postproduction for a 2016 release. Her novel The History of Great Things will be published by Harper Perennial in April 2016. Click here to learn more.

Anthony Breznican

Anthony Breznican was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of Pittsurgh in 1998. He has worked as a reporter for The Arizona Republic, Associated Press, and USA Today. He is currently a senior staff writer for Entertainment Weekly. Brutal Youth is his debut novel. Click here to learn more.

Rilla Askew

Known for the energy, emotional range and formal complexity of her work in long-form fiction, Rilla Askew writes with vivid dramatic assurance and rich compassion of the events of Oklahoma, and indeed, American history, her scope both intimate and epic. She tackles brutal issues of race and culture without pulling punches, yet she evokes the essential humanity of all her characters. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes lyric, sometimes funny, always engaging, her fiction like Faulkner's explores the related tragedies of family and history. As in the work of Cormac McCarthy, Askew shows how an unforgiving landscape resonates in human fate.

Nate Marshall

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is the author of Wild Hundreds and an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Wild Hundreds has been honored with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. His last rap album, Grown came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. Nate is a member of The Dark Noise Collective. He completed a B.A. in English and African American Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at The University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers' Program. Nate has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and The University of Michigan. He is the Director of National Programs for Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Festivaland a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University.

Cynthea Liu

Cynthea Liu is author of BIKE ON, BEAR! (Simon & Schuster), which is an Illinois Reads title and the Oklahoma Book Award winner in 2016. PARIS PAN TAKES THE DARE (Putnam) is a humorous mystery novel for grades 4-7, and THE GREAT CALL OF CHINA (grades 7-12) is part of Speak’s bestselling S.A.S.S. series. Her picture book WOOBY AND PEEP (ages 4-8) was a Barnes & Noble Summer selection. Cynthea’s forthcoming titles are GUS LOVES CINDERELLA (Disney/Random House), FLOUNDER LOVES ARIEL (Disney/Random House), and DISNEY PRINCESS STORYBOOK COLLECTION (Disney Book Group). She has also ghostwritten a bestselling chapter book title for Disney/Random House.

Based in Chicago, Cynthea has spoken to a number of schools in Illinois and across the country. She has also been a guest speaker for national conferences organized by the American Library Association, American Association of School Librarians, Association for Library Services to Children, and the Young Adult Library Services Association, among others. In addition, Cynthea has had the opportunity to speak locally and regionally for the Illinois School Media Library Association, the Illinois Reading Council, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Chicago Teacher-Librarians Association.

Cynthea is a frequent guest author for local family literacy nights and young author conferences. She is also a writing coach and faculty member for conferences associated with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and local universities and colleges. She has been featured on ABC’s Chicago 7 and the Chicago Sun Times.