Author: Author's Answer

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of eight books of fiction, including The Evolution of Love, Lava Falls, and A Thin Bright Line, which the New York Times said, “triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances.” Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination, a Yaddo Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. Her stories have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, and Chinese. Bledsoe lives in the Bay Area.

Felice Cohen, author, speaker, Holocaust educator, is known nationally and internationally as the woman who lived in the world’s smallest apartment. Her award-winning book 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet (…or more) is a “want to” guide motivating people to do more of what they love by letting go of extra stuff. The book was inspired by the YouTube video of her 90-square-foot NYC studio that went viral with over 22 million views, gaining media attention across the globe. As the grandchild of two Holocaust survivors, Felice is also the author of What Papa Told Me, a memoir about her grandfather’s life before, during and after the war. The book has been endorsed by Elie Wiesel, is taught in schools and has been translated into Polish. Felice has a memoir coming out soon called No Whining.

Robert Aquinas McNally is the author or coauthor of ten nonfiction books, most recently The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America’s Gilded Age, general-nonfiction finalist in the Northern California Book Awards and winner of a Commonwealth Club gold medal. His short nonfiction has appeared in periodicals ranging from Sierra and Wild West to Indian Country Today Media Network and California Wild. McNally is also the author of the full-length poetry collection Simply to Know Its Name, which won the Grayson Books Poetry Prize in 2014, as well as four chapbooks. His poems have appeared in a long list of journals and anthologies and been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize.

Karen Odden received her PhD in English from NYU, where she wrote her dissertation on Victorian literature and history. After teaching at UW-Milwaukee and writing for academia, she turned to writing mysteries set in foggy 1870s London. Her first, A LADY IN THE SMOKE, was a USA Today bestseller; A DANGEROUS DUET won best historical novel at the NM-AZ book awards. Her most recent, A TRACE OF DECEIT (William Morrow, 2019), was inspired by her time at Christie’s auction house during the scandalous ‘90s. She lives in Arizona with her family and her rescue beagle, Rosy.

Maria Sipilä is CEO of Sipila Consulting. She is a leading thinker on growth and advises companies of all sizes and public organizations on growth strategies and brands. Brand Mash-Up (available on Amazon) is her is her third book and she has written several articles for business papers. Her book Heart of Growth (Kasvun sydan in Finnish) covers high growth companies and modern marketing techniques. Her love for marketing and collaborations was seen at Ericsson, where she introduced to the Finnish market a new method called Joint Marketing. She later held leadership positions with Nokia’s marketing from 1997-2005, when Nokia’s brand value was at its highest. Maria is also known for her work with start-ups and in venture capital. Maria holds a master’s degree in marketing from Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.

Deborah Kalb is the author of George Washington and the Magic Hat and John Adams and the Magic Bobblehead, middle grade novels for kids. The third in the series, Thomas Jefferson and the Return of the Magic Hat, will be published this fall. She also is the co-author with her father, Marvin Kalb, of Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama, and she runs the author Q&A website Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. She worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for two decades, and she lives in the D.C. area.

Hunter Howe Cates is the author of Oklahoma’s Atticus, the true story of how his grandfather defended a Cherokee man falsely accused of murder in Tulsa, 1953. Cates is an advertising copywriter, and is the principal and writer for Cates Creates, LLC. a copy and content marketing firm. He has written ad copy for national and international brands during his career. He is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.