Meet the Authors Guild Council

Officers

Maya Shanbhag Lang

Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Memoir of 2020 by Amazon, “Good Morning America,” and others. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, a modern riff on Ulysses, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. In 2021, the American Civil Rights Museum named her a “Woman You Should Know.” Winner of the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction, she holds a PhD in Comparative Literature.

Mary Bly

Mary Bly is the chair of the English Department at Fordham University, and a New York Times bestselling author of historical romance novels under the pen name Eloisa James. She has published more than thirty books, translated in twenty-six languages, with sales worldwide of seven million. Her most recent novel is The Reluctant Countess (2022). She also wrote the New York Times bestselling memoir Paris in Love about the year her family spent in France; and Lizzie and Dante, a novel set in Italy, under her own name. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. She currently lives in New York.

W. Ralph Eubanks

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape. He is also the author of two other books: Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. He has contributed articles to The Washington Post’s Outlook and Style sections, WIRED, The Hedgehog Review, The Wall Street Journal, The American Scholar, The New Yorker, and NPR. A graduate of the University of Mississippi (BA) and the University of Michigan (MA, English Language and Literature), he is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. Mr. Eubanks lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children. He is currently a faculty fellow and writer-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

Peter Petre

Peter Petre co-wrote Arnold Schwarzenegger’s memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, a New York Times bestseller. He also co-authored Alan Greenspan’s memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Mr. Petre has co-written two other bestsellers: General H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s It Doesn’t Take a Hero and Thomas J. Watson Jr.’s Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. He assisted on Steven Rattner’s Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry and on Robert S. McNamara’s In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Mr. Petre was executive editor at Fortune, where he directed coverage of infotech, biotech, medicine, industrial technology, and science. He holds a BA from the University of Iowa and an MA from Johns Hopkins University. He and his wife, Ann Banks, live in New York City.

Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, three collections of short stories, a children’s book, and a collection of essays. She has been nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ms. Bloom has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, O Magazine, and Vogue, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Her work has been translated into 18 languages. She has written many pilot scripts for cable and network, and she created, wrote, and ran the short-lived series State of Mind, starring Lili Taylor. She lives in Connecticut and is now Director for the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University.

Council Members

Rich Benjamin

Rich Benjamin is a cultural anthropologist whose writing focuses on contemporary U.S. politics and culture, specializing in democracy, social relations, space and place, demographics, and race. He is also a sought-after lecturer, often interviewed in the national and international media. His essays appear regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review section. Mr. Benjamin is completing a family memoir that doubles as a portrait of post-Cold War America. The book tackles critical questions of migration, diaspora, racialization, and nation-making. Talk to Me will be published by Pantheon/Knopf Doubleday. Mr. Benjamin’s first book, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, won an Editor’s Choice Award from the American Library Association. Now in its second printing, this groundbreaking anthropological study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and “Trumpism” in contemporary U.S. life. Mr. Benjamin’s past and ongoing research have received significant support from Civitella, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Russell Sage Foundation, Columbia Law School, the Bellagio Center, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Benjamin’s community citizenship is to serve on a few Boards of Trustees: Art Omi, the renowned arts center; New Public, the pro-democracy technology venture; and the Authors Guild, the national union for writers that has been protecting free speech and authors’ rights since 1912.

Sarina Bowen

Sarina Bowen is a twenty-four-time USA Today bestselling author, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary romance novels. Formerly a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Ms. Bowen holds a BA in economics from Yale University. A New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country in the 1760s, she is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. She lives with her family on a few wooded acres in New Hampshire. Ms. Bowen’s books are published in more than a dozen languages with fifteen international publishers.

Christopher Castellani

Christopher Castellani is the author of four novels, most recently Leading Men, for which he received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Mass Cultural Council, among others. His book of essays on narration in fiction, The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story, was published by Graywolf Press in 2016. Christopher is on the fiction faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and he chairs the writing panel for the national YoungArts foundation. He is the founder of GrubStreet’s Muse & the Marketplace national writers’ conference, which he directed for twenty years. In 2015, he was awarded the Barnes and Noble/Poets & Writers “Writer for Writers” Award in recognition of his contributions to the literary community and his generosity toward fellow writers. For the 2022-2023 academic year, he is the Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. He lives in Boston and Provincetown.

Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee was born in Rhode Island and raised in South Korea, Guam, and Maine. He is a recipient of the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Ledig House, the Hermitage and Civitella Ranieri. His first novel, Edinburgh, received the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award, and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year. In 2003, Out Magazine honored him as one of their 100 Most Influential People of the Year. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, Departures, The Awl, and other publications. He has taught writing at Wesleyan, Amherst College, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Columbia University. His new novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming in fall of 2015. He currently lives in New York City.

Sylvia Day

Sylvia Day is the bestselling author of more than twenty award-winning novels, including ten New York Times bestsellers and thirteen USA Today bestsellers. She is a number one bestselling author in twenty-nine countries, with translations in forty-one languages and more than twenty million copies of her books in print. Ms. Day divides her time between Las Vegas, Seattle, and Manhattan.

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is the author of six books of fiction, the most recent the novel Matrix (September 2021). Her work has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, and France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, was a three-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and twice for the Kirkus Prize, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Prize, the Southern Book Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Prize. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Mira Jacob

Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, nominated for three Eisner Awards, and named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a best book of the year by Time, Esquire, Publisher’s Weekly, and Library Journal. It is currently in development as a television series. Her novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata Literature Life First Book Award, longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, and the Telegraph. She is currently as Assistant Professor at the Creative Writing MFA Program at The New School, and a founding faculty member of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Randolph College.

Christina Baker Kline

A #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Exiles, Orphan Train, and A Piece of the World, Christina Baker Kline is published in 40 countries. Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes, and have been chosen by hundreds of communities, universities, and schools as One Book, One Read selections. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Psychology Today, and Slate.

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, artist, and author who writes on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technology, the philosophy of consciousness and information, internet politics, and the future of humanism. Dr. Lanier’s books have won varied awards, including the 2014 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize, and best book of the year at literary events such as the San Francisco Book Festival. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Discover, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired Magazine (where he was a founding contributing editor), and Scientific American. In 2018, he was named one of the twenty-five most influential people in the previous twenty-five years of tech history by Wired. He’s also been named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, top one hundred public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy Magazine, and top fifty World Thinkers by Prospect Magazine. In 2009, he received a Lifetime Career Award from the IEEE, the preeminent international engineering.

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation (2018) and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard (2018–2019). Her novel Pachinko (2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and was selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017. A New York Times bestseller, Pachinko was also chosen by the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library as a Top 10 Book of the Year. Pachinko was a selection for “Now Read This,” the joint book club of PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, including NPR, PBS, and CNN. Ms. Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was a national bestseller and a Top 10 Book of the Year for The London Times, NPR’s Fresh Air, and USA Today. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, The London Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves on the Board of Trustees of PEN America.

Steven Levy

Steven Levy is a longtime journalist and author focusing on technology. Since 2008, he has been a writer at Wired magazine, where his current title is editor-at-large. Previously he was at Newsweek, where he worked as senior editor, chief technology correspondent, and columnist. He is the author of seven books, including Hackers, Crypto, The Perfect Thing, and In the Plex, which was named the best business book of the year by Amazon. Crypto won the grand eBook prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book Festival. His most recent book is Facebook: The Inside Story. His work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Esquire. He currently lives in New York City and western Massachusetts with his wife.

Kelly Starling Lyons

Kelly Starling Lyons is an award-winning children’s book author, teaching artist, and founding member of The Brown Bookshelf. Her latest titles are Tiara’s Hat Parade, Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon, Sing a Song: How “Lift Every Voice & Sing” Inspired Generations, Going Down Home with Daddy,andthe Ty’s Travels easy reader series. Her mission is to create books that center Black heroes; celebrate family, friendship, and heritage; and show all children the storyteller they hold inside.

Courtney Maum

Courtney Maum is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking publishing guide that Vanity Fair recently named one of the ten best books for writers, Before and After the Book Deal, and the memoir The Year of the Horses, chosen by The Today Show as the best read for mental health awareness. A writing coach, executive director of the nonprofit learning collaborative The Cabins, and educator, Ms. Maum’s mission is to help people hold on to the joy of artmaking in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. Her publishing tips newsletter and online masterclasses can be found at CourtneyMaum.com

D.T. Max

D.T. Max is the author of the bestselling Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (2012) and The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery (2006). He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010 and has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, and many other publications. Max has been a member of the Authors Guild since 1992.

Julia Sanches

Julia Sanches has translated more than a dozen books from Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan into English. Her translations and writing have appeared in Granta, LitHub, The Paris Review Daily, and The Common, among others. She has received support for her work from the PEN Heim grant, PEN Translates, and the New York State Council of the Arts. Born in Brazil, Julia now lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Jaunique Sealey

Jaunique Sealey is an accomplished multi-disciplinary professional. As an attorney, author, executive, and strategist, she has helped devise a platinum-selling album release, led award-winning marketing agency work, created her own bestselling novel series, and launched multiple companies from concept to revenue, including a cosmetics brand on QVC. Her unique experience-based insights have been featured by national and international platforms such as SXSW, Forbes, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Fox News. Under the pen name Jayne Allen, Ms. Sealey is the author of Black Girls Must Die Exhausted. Initially self-published, her groundbreaking debut novel was acquired by the Harper Perennial imprint along with its sequel books, Black Girls Must Be Magic and Black Girls Must Have It All. Black Girls Must Be Magic was named as one of the seven Best Novels of 2022 by Essence Magazine. She has been reviewed by The New York Times Book Review, and has been featured on Good Morning America, and in USA Today, BuzzFeed, Black Enterprise, HOUR Detroit Magazine, and numerous other publications. Also a non-fiction author, Ms. Sealey wrote and published Piece of the Fame, and Regroup, both acclaimed titles delivering her business expertise and general advice in the areas of social media, brand development, and entrepreneurship. Since 2018, through her online educational platform Book Genius, she has served hundreds of largely under-represented authors with writing and marketing resources and instruction. A graduate of Duke University Pratt School of Engineering and Harvard Law School, Ms. Sealey spent a decade as an entertainment attorney and another decade as an entrepreneur, turnaround strategist, and marketing executive, serving as a founder and founding executive management for several companies and brands.

James Shapiro

James Shapiro has taught English Literature at Columbia University since 1985. His books include Shakespeare and the Jews; Oberammergau; 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare; Contested Will; The Year of Lear: 1606; and Shakespeare in a Divided America. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and the Financial Times. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stephen Hong Sohn

Stephen Hong Sohn, a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral fellow (2006–2007), has edited or co-edited a number of different works and special issues, including Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits (Temple University Press, 2006); Studies in the Literary Imagination (SLI, Vol. 37.1, Spring 2004) on Asian American Literature; MELUS (Winter 2008) on the topic of “Alien/Asian”; and Modern Fiction Studies on the topic of “Theorizing Asian American Fiction” (2010). Articles have appeared or are forthcoming in American Quarterly, Arizona Quarterly, Cultural Critique, Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Narrative Theory, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in the Literary Imagination, and Southeast Asian Review of English (SARE), among other journals. He was co-chair of The Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS), a literature society affiliated with the American Literature Association from 2006–2008. He co-edited Karen Tei Yamashita’s Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance (Coffee House Press, 2014). His first book, Racial Asymmetries (New York University Press, 2014), focuses on contemporary Asian American fictional production, social context methodology, and aesthetic practices. His second book, Inscrutable Belongings (Stanford University Press, 2018), considers alternative kinship, communal formations, and plots of survival in queer Asian North American fictions. It was the winner of the 2020 Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities and Cultural Studies: Literary Studies, sponsored by the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS). A third book and maybe even a fourth are brewing. He is also founder and moderator of Asian American Literature Fans, an open access website devoted to reviews and discussions in the field.

T.J. Stiles

T.J. Stiles received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History for his third and most recent book, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. His second book, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, won the 2009 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A 2011 Guggenheim fellow and an elected member of the Society of American Historians, Stiles is a native of Benton County, Minnesota, a graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, and now lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children. His website is http://tjstiles.net.

Jia Tolentino

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror. She recently received a Whiting Award. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn.

Danielle Trussoni

Danielle Trussoni is the New York Times and international bestselling author of seven books, including Angelology and The Ancestor, and the memoir Falling Through the Earth, which was chosen as one of the ten Best Books of the year by The New York Times. She currently writes the Dark Matters monthly book column for The New York Times Book Review. Ms. Trussoni was the 2020 chair jurist for The Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Puzzle Master, will be available in June 2023. She currently lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Rachel Vail

Rachel Vail is the award-winning author of more than 30 books for young people, including Unfriended, the Justin Case books, and Sometimes I’m Bumbaloo. Rachel lives in New York City with her husband, their two sons, a tortoise named Lightning, and a stack of emails she really is about to deal with as the head of the Authors Guild Children’s Book Group.

You can visit her online at www.RachelVail.com.

Nicholas Weinstock

Nicholas Weinstock began his career writing for The Nation and The New York Times Magazine, workingat Spy magazine, and editing books at Random House and Riverhead Books. He is the author of a non-fiction book, The Secret Love of Sons; the novels As Long As She Needs Me and The Golden Hour; and essays and articles for National Public Radio, Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Out, The Huffington Post, and other national publications. He currently runs a movie and television production company, Invention Films, based in Los Angeles—and is thrilled and proud to serve as a thriving West Coast branch of the Authors Guild Council.

Ex-officio* and Honorary Members of the Council

Roy Blount Jr.*

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of twenty-four books, about (for instance) the Pittsburgh Steelers, what barnyard animals are thinking, Duck Soup, Robert E. Lee, the first woman president of the United States, and, most recently, the alphabet. He is an ex-president of the Authors Guild, a panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me,” a New York Public Library Literary Lion, an American Heritage Dictionary usage consultant, and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He lives in western Massachusetts and New Orleans.

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE was born and raised in England. She left school at 15 for the typing pool at the Yorkshire Evening Post. At 16 she was a reporter, and at 18 she became the paper’s first woman’s page editor. Two years later, aged 20, she moved to London and became a fashion editor and columnist on Fleet Street.

Barbara started writing fiction when she was just seven-years-old and sold her first short story to a magazine for seven shillings and sixpence when she was ten. She published her first novel, A Woman of Substance, in 1979. It went from bestseller to super seller within its first year and stayed on the New York Times’ list for 43 weeks. 

Barbara has had 35 novels and four novellas published, all worldwide bestsellers, and her latest, In the Lion’s Den, is out now. Ten of her books have been produced as TV films or drama series by her late movie producer husband Bob Bradford and actors including Liam Neeson, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jenny Seagrove, Deborah Kerr, Sir John Mills and Elizabeth Hurley. 

Barbara holds five Honorary Doctorate of Letters. These are from the University of Leeds, Yorkshire; the University of Bradford, Yorkshire; Teikyo Post University, Connecticut; Siena College, Loudonville, New York; Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh, New York.

Barbara is the recipient of 25 other awards for her writing achievements and philanthropy. 

The Brotherton Library of Leeds University is the Keeper of the Barbara Taylor Bradford Archive. All of Barbara’s original manuscripts are housed there (34 works of fiction). They are displayed next to those of Yorkshire’s other legendary writers, including the Brönte sisters. 

Today, Barbara Taylor Bradford is published in over 90 countries in 40 languages, with sales figures in excess of 90 million. 

Susan Cheever

Susan Cheever is the best-selling author of many books on American History. The most recent, Drinking in America: Our Secret History was long listed for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction. Some of her other notable works include a biography of Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of the poet E.E. Cummings, Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John Cheever, and five novels. In addition to her writing and teaching career, Susan is an experienced public speaker and a prize-winning journalist. She has written for Newsweek and The New York Times, and she was part of a news team in 1996 at Newsday which won a Pulitzer Prize. She is a director of the Yaddo Corporation teaches at Bennington College and The New School in their MFA programs. Her work has also been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the Laurence L. & Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award, and earned a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Pat Cummings

Author and/or illustrator of more than 40 books, Pat Cummings edited the award-winning series Talking with Artists, which profiles prominent children’s book illustrators. Recipient of the Orbis Pictus, Coretta Scott King, and Boston Globe-Horn Book awards, she writes and illustrates for readers from “their first taste of a board-book until they outgrow pictures.” She is a member of the Writers Guild of America and serves on the board of advisors of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the board of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the board of directors of the Authors Guild Foundation, and as president of the Authors League Fund. Ms. Cummings teaches children’s book illustration and writing at The New School’s Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute.

Anne Edwards*

Anne Edwards is a former president of the Authors Guild. She was raised in Hollywood and had a short career as a child performer. She was a junior writer at MGM at the age of 17, then attended UCLA and SMU She is the author of many bestselling biographies and novels including The Survivors, Vivien Leigh, Matriarch: Queen Mary: And the House of Windsor, Early Reagan, Margaret Mitchell: The Road to Tara, Katharine Hepburn, Maria Callas, Judy Garland, Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy, and Diana: And the Life She Led. Her novel, Haunted Summer, about Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron’s stormy summer when Mary’s Frankenstein was written, was adapted for the screen. Having spent many years abroad, she returned to the USA in the 1970s where, for the last fifteen years, she has lived in Beverly Hills, California and where, for a time, she conducted a class in writing biography at UCLA. Her most recently published work is a memoir Leaving Home, (2012). Currently she is working on a novel about Hollywood in the 1930s.

Erica Jong*

Erica Jong was President of the Authors Guild from 1991 to 1993 and founded the Authors Guild benefit. She is a great supporter of the fair treatment of authors. Erica is a celebrated poet who has published 8 books of poetry and has over 22 published books that also include fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. Her most popular novel—Fear of Flying—celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2013. Her new novel—Fear of Dying—is due for publication in September 2015.

John R. MacArthur

John R. (Rick) MacArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine and an award-winning journalist and author. Under his leadership, Harper’s has received 22 National Magazine Awards, the industry’s highest recognition. He edited and wrote the introduction (and conducted the last interview) for Graham Greene: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, published by Melville House in 2019. His essays appear regularly in The Spectator (U.K.), and he writes a column (in French) for Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper. In 2017, he was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, an honor bestowed by the French government. His books include Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War and The Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, & the Subversion of American Democracy. Mr. MacArthur grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and graduated in 1978 from Columbia University with a B.A. in history. He lives with his wife and two daughters in New York City.

Stephen Manes

Author, journalist, screenwriter, editor, and software developer, Stephen Manes has written more than 30 books for readers of all ages. He is the coauthor of the best-selling biography Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. Mr. Manes has also written many books for children, including the award-winning Be A Perfect Person in Just Three Days! and the best-selling Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday! His books for young adults include Comedy High and The Obnoxious Jerks, and his screenplays have been produced for television and movies. His latest book is Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet. He wrote the Digital Tools column for Forbes and the Full Disclosure column for PC World, cohosted the public television series PC World’s Digital Duo, and was a columnist for The New York Times, Information Week, PC Magazine, PC Sources, PCjr.,and PC/Computing.

Sidney Offit

Sidney Offit is a writer and teacher. The recipient of distinguished teaching awards from both the New School and New York University, Mr. Offit has written novels, books for young readers, and two memoirs. He was the senior editor of Intellectual Digest, book editor of Politics Today, and the contributing editor of Baseball Magazine. For 35 years, he served as curator of the George Polk Journalism Awards. Mr. Offit has been a member of the Authors Guild Council for more than three decades. He served as President of the Authors Guild Foundation and the Authors League Fund, where he is now Vice President.

Mary Pope Osborne*

Mary Pope Osborne has written many children’s books, including novels, picture books, biographies, and retellings of mythology and folktales. She is best known as the author of the Magic Tree House Series. A former president of the Authors Guild, she is strong advocate for copyright protection, fair publishing contracts, and freedom of expression. She has traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad, speaking about the need to get books in the hands of underserved children.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin*

A founding editor of Ms. magazine, LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN is a writer, lecturer, social justice activist, and the author of eleven books, most recently her latest novel, Single Jewish Male Seeking Soulmate (2015). She has also published another novel, Three Daughters, and nine non-fiction works.

Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston is a journalist and author who has published over thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction. Before becoming a full-time writer, Preston worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught non-fiction writing at Princeton University. He also writes occasional articles about science for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

Roxana Robinson*

Roxana Robinson writes novels, short stories, biography, essays, reviews, and other things. She’s the author of nine books, including the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Her most recent is the novel, Sparta, about a Marine coming home from Iraq. She writes about war, the environment, and human relations.

Her website is www.roxanarobinson.com

Jean Strouse

Jean Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier and Alice James: A Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Vogue, and Slate. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, she has received fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations, served as President of the Society of American Historians, and worked as a consultant (oral historian) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She was Director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library from 2003 to 2017, and is currently writing a book about John Singer Sargent’s twelve portraits of the family of Asher Wertheimer, a prominent London art dealer.

Nick Taylor*

Nick Taylor writes non-fiction books and articles on subjects ranging from American history to the Mafia. He is also a memoirist and a ghostwriter. He joined the Authors Guild in 1988 and served as its president from 2002 to 2006.

Scott Turow*

Scott Turow was a struggling novelist and university teacher when he decided to go to law school, which he admits proved to be the great break of his literary career. He has published ten bestselling works of fiction, starting with Presumed Innocent, and has also written two non-fiction books about the law, including his first published book, One L, about his experiences as a law student. He is a former president of the Guild.

Personal website: scottturow.com

Advisory Council

Judy Blume

Judy Blume’s twenty-eight titles range from picture books to bestselling novels, including Wifey, Smart Women, and Summer Sisters. She is perhaps best known for her books for young readers, among them Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Tiger Eyes, and Forever. Her Fudge series began with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and includes five books. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages. In 1996, she received the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for a body of work that has spoken to young adults for more than twenty years. In 2004, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She serves on the boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Key West Literary Seminar. She is currently working on a new novel.

Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her most recent book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.

CJ Lyons

As a former pediatric ER doctor and New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, C.J. Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge “thrillers with heart.” Her novels have won numerous awards and critical acclaim as she has traversed a publishing career partnering with major NYC publishers, small presses, as well as self-publishing and selling over two million books.

C.J. accepted the Author Guild’s invitation to join their Advisory Council because she believes authors need to empower themselves as CEOs of their own global media empire and take control of their careers.

Learn more about her books at www.CJLyons.net and find publishing resources at www.NoRulesJustWRITE.com.

Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo.  A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently an Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.

Photo credit: Nina Subin

Cathleen Schine

Cathleen Schine is a novelist. An unsuccessful student of medieval history, she left academia for the lucrative world of freelance journalism before turning to fiction. Her novels include Rameau’s Niece, The Love Letter, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and most recently, Fin & Lady. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Website: cathleenschine.com  Twitter: @cathleenschine

Hampton Sides

Hampton Sides is best known for his epic adventure stories, often set in war time or depicting expeditions of exploration and discovery. His historical works include Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, and In the Kingdom of Ice. Editor-at-large for Outside magazine and a frequent contributor to National Geographic, he teaches narrative non-fiction at Colorado College, where he is Journalist-in-Residence. Hampton is also a partner of Atalaya Productions, a Santa Fe–based independent production company that develops period dramas for the screen.

Personal website: www.hamptonsides.com

Georges Ugeux

A lawyer and economist by training, Georges Ugeux is Chairman and CEO of Galileo Global Advisors, a firm he founded to offer CEOs, Boards of Directors, and Governments independent advice on international business development, restructuring, compliance, and capital market issues.

He teaches European and Central Banking at the Columbia University School of Law. His titles include The Betrayal of Finance: Twelve Reforms to Restore Confidence and International Finance Regulation: The Quest for Financial Stability. He is a Director of AXA Tian Ping Property & Casualty, a joint venture insurance company in Shanghai. He is also a Director of Avant, a Japanese business solution company. He is a Member of the Investment Committee of the Sisters of Our Lady of Africa and an honorary chair of the Belgian American Chamber of Commerce and the Catholic University of Louvain Foundation. He sits on the International Advisory Boards of Guangzhou Municipal Board for International Investment, the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Oxford Analytica and APCO worldwide.

Meg Wolitzer

Meg Wolitzer published her first novel, Sleepwalking, in 1982, a year after graduating from Brown University. Since then, her novels have included The Wife, The Position, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, and her latest, The Interestings. Recently she published a novel for young adults, Belzhar. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Columbia University, among others, and in 2013 was a guest artist in the Princeton Atelier program at Princeton University. Meg Wolitzer is currently a member of the creative writing faculty at Stony Brook Southampton. She lives in New York City.