Author Tent - Saturday, 9/12
12:00 - 2:00 PM
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Eira Brand
Eira Brand (she/her) is a queer sci-fi horror author originally from Colorado, who writes stories about queer survival in fantastical yet horrifying worlds.
Book Title: Run Like Hell
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J. N. Courtney
J. N. Courtney is a children's book author living in upstate NY. She writes nonfiction and fiction books for children which she hopes will resonate with her readers. She is a member of SCBWI, RACWI, ALA and the Author's Guild.
Book Titles: RATS With Backpacks: Dr. Donna Kean and Her Work at APOPO, CLOUDSCAPE Charlie's Story, CLOUDSCAPE Matilda's Story
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Alice McDowell, Ph.D.
Alice McDowell, Ph.D., is an author, spiritual director, workshop leader, and retreat guide. She co-founded Light on the Hill Retreat Center in 1991 where she continues to guide individuals and groups on their spiritual journeys. . As a professor of religious studies at Ithaca College for eighteen years, she taught courses in mysticism, world religions, depth psychology, and women’s studies.
Book Titles: You Royal Nature: Inspiring Essays to Find Your Way Home; Hidden Treasure: How to Break Free of Five Patterns that Hide Your True Self
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J.C. Moore
J.C. Moore is a bestselling author whose books tend to feature small towns, dark secrets, missing people, serial killers, and ordinary people having very bad days. He writes fast-paced crime and suspense, with characters and story always at the center.
Book Titles: Secrets From A Serial Killer, The Winter of Hidden Knives, Behind All The Dark Roads, Dead Man’s Payback, No Way Out Alive, The Ex She Feared
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Yvonne Rogalski
Yvonne Rogalski lives with her husband and dog among the gorges and waterfalls of Ithaca, New York. She has a PhD in Rehabilitation Science and a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She left academia to write creative non-fiction.
Book: Hysterectomy: A Memoir
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Kelly Schweiger
Kelly Schweiger is the bestselling author of family-centered post-apocalyptic fiction that blends survival, homesteading, preparedness, and resilient communities with unforgettable characters and heart. A wife, mother, grandmother, and lifelong storyteller from Upstate New York, she writes stories of hope, strength, sacrifice, and the enduring bonds of family.
Books: Last Light, Winter's Bite, Enduring Fight, Gus & Jo, The First Stranger, What Remains, What Divides, Callahan Pantry Cookbook, Light in the Dark, Prepared, Not Perfect
2:00 - 4:00 PM
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H. R. Cole
H. R. Cole is an award-winning fantasy writer and health journalist. She lives in rural Upstate New York with her husband, cats, dogs, and a house full of collectible swords.
Book Title: Daughter of the Void
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Time Drake
Tim Drake has worked in environmental education for over 25 years with a focus on nature connection, mindfulness and natural history. Jason Hamilton is Professor in the Department of the Environment at Ithaca College. He is founder and Education Director of the IC natural reserve system.
Book Title: Mindful by Nature: The inner work of being outdoors
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Erica Rose Eberhart
Erica Rose Eberhart is a neurodivergent, disabled writer of queer characters, dragons, girls who grow feathers, and boys who become trees. She lives in the New York Finger Lakes with her family. She is the author of The Elder Tree Trilogy.
Book Titles: Tarnished, Diminished, and Vanquished (The Elder Tree Trilogy)
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Bridget Huh
Bridget Huh is a queer Korean Canadian poet from Toronto (Tkaronto). She is the winner of the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award, and has been recognized for awards in North American Review, Fugue Journal, and Palette Poetry. Her debut collection of poetry, Fugue Body, was published by Véhicule Press in March 2025.
Book Title: Fugue Body
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Clare Jones
Clare Jones is a writer, editor, and educator. She has received grants and fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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Anthony J. Pucci
Anthony J. Pucci taught English for forty-three years. Whoppers and Other Lies is his eleventh Michael Bishop Mystery. A native of Massachusetts, he resides with his wife in a small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Book Titles: Outline for Murder, Schooled in Deception, A Question of Judgment, Murder on the Marginal Way, Rooted in Evil, Winning Ticket, Where There is Darkness, The Uninvited, Night of Joy, Night of Sorrow, Murder on the Grand Canal, Whoppers and Other Lies
4:00 - 6:00 PM
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Naomi Artemi
From hiking Mount Vesuvius and Arenal Volcano to walking Hadrian’s Wall and the black sand shores of the Venezuelan coast, to earning a Masters in Screenwriting from the National Film School of Ireland, her experiences trekking the world have been a vital muse for Naomi’s creative writing endeavors. Consequently, her stories are infused with the exotic and often otherworldly. Her characters tend to be outsiders who must navigate these other cultural environments. A fish out of water—if the fish could time travel or shape shift…
Book Titles: Beware the Light: An Anthology of Dark Fiction; Shift; Whimsy: A Doom & Gloom Antidote (editor); Weirdscapes: An Otherworldly Anthology; Remembering Tomorrow: Speculative Stories of the Past & the Possible
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Janie E. Bibbie
Janie E. Bibbie was Tompkins County Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. This year she self-published her 18th book, "Encourage: Poems for Busy Days and Sleepless Nights".
Book Title: Encourage; Time Flies; Flow; Alzheimer's Up Close and Personal; Keep Moving
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Caleb Dibartolo
A Veteran Grad student with a newly found eye for science-fiction. Comedy, action, existential crises. What's not to love?
Book Title: Calico
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Dan Kopcow
Dan Kopcow is an Ithaca author of several award-winning novels, including his rom-com, “Madcap Serenade,” published in July 2024 by Black Rose Writing, which won the 2025 Independent Press Award for best romantic comedy, “Prior Futures,” a sci-fi noir detective novel, published in December 2021 by Black Rose Writing, which won a 2022 Independent Press Award for Science Fiction Distinguished Favorite and was a Science Fiction Best Thriller of 2021 Finalist at BestThriller.com, and “Worst. Date. Ever.,” a fiction short story collection published by Regal House Publishing in March 2020 which was named one of 2020’s top 100 novels by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).
Book Titles: Madcap Serenade; Prior Futures; Worst. Date. Ever.
Dan’s next novel, “Wayward Tracks,” a folk music cozy mystery, will be published by The Wild Rose Press in 2027.
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J.C. Moore
J.C. Moore is a bestselling author whose books tend to feature small towns, dark secrets, missing people, serial killers, and ordinary people having very bad days. He writes fast-paced crime and suspense, with characters and story always at the center.
Book Titles: Secrets From A Serial Killer, The Winter of Hidden Knives, Behind All The Dark Roads, Dead Man’s Payback, No Way Out Alive, The Ex She Feared
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Christa Nunez
Chlöé and Christa are daughter and mother, united by family and a shared love of the natural world. Our love of people, animals, and plants is matched only by our joy in expressing ourselves in art and the written word. With the rest of the family, we steward the Learning Farm, our small family farm in the Finger Lakes of New York. When we’re not frolicking with the alpacas and sheep, we’re cackling at the chickens and ducks competing rather fowl-y for feathered supremacy in our affections.
Book Title: Alphabet Aviary
Author Tent - Sunday, 9/13
12:00 - 2:00 PM
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Naomi Artemi
From hiking Mount Vesuvius and Arenal Volcano to walking Hadrian’s Wall and the black sand shores of the Venezuelan coast, to earning a Masters in Screenwriting from the National Film School of Ireland, her experiences trekking the world have been a vital muse for Naomi’s creative writing endeavors. Consequently, her stories are infused with the exotic and often otherworldly. Her characters tend to be outsiders who must navigate these other cultural environments. A fish out of water—if the fish could time travel or shape shift…
Book Titles: Beware the Light: An Anthology of Dark Fiction; Shift; Whimsy: A Doom & Gloom Antidote (editor); Weirdscapes: An Otherworldly Anthology; Remembering Tomorrow: Speculative Stories of the Past & the Possible
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Eva Dadlez
Eva Dadlez is Professor Emerita of philosophy at the University of Central Oklahoma and currently resides in Ithaca, NY. She received her PhD from Syracuse University. She writes on issues at the intersection (sometimes the collision) of aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology.
Book Titles: What's Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions (Penn State Press 1997)/Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)/Jane Austen's Emma: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2018) All still in print
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John Linstrom
John Linstrom is a poet, editor, and Director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Center Project for Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County. He is the author of the poetry collection To Leave for Our Own Country (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) and series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press. His editions of Bailey's work include The Nature-Study Idea, The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion, and the centennial edition of The Holy Earth.
Book Titles: To Leave for Our Own Country; The Nature-Study Idea and Related Writings by Liberty Hyde Bailey; The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion; The Holy Earth by Liberty Hyde Bailey
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Yvonne Rogalski
Yvonne Rogalski lives with her husband and dog among the gorges and waterfalls of Ithaca, New York. She has a PhD in Rehabilitation Science and a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She left academia to write creative non-fiction.
Book: Hysterectomy: A Memoir
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Jada Simone
Jada Simone (aka a_note_from_jada), originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a local Ithaca-based poet and visual artist working in sculpture, painting, and performance mediums. A lifelong journaler, she took her words to the stage for the first time at a local open mic in 2023 with the launch of her first chapbook, "Unfollowed Into the Dark," in 2024. Her commitment to the creative process led to a deep involvement in the Ithaca poetry community by hosting community conversations, leading summer writing workshops at the Tompkins County Public Library, and even starting month-long poetry challenges on social media. She is passionate about sharing her love for poetry with others and hopes her work inspires others to do the same.
Connect with Simone on Instagram (@a_note_from_jada) or follow her blog at anotefromjada.wordpress.com
Book Title: Unfollowed Into the Dark
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Cathy Shipos
We Declare is an anthology of 50 pieces written by local writers who are part of Ellen Schmidt’s Writers' Room community. Pieces were written over the course of the past year in response to prompts taken from the Declaration of Independence.
Book Title: We Declare: A Storytelling Project for Our Times
2:00 - 4:00 PM
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Sue Brightly
Sue Brightly, illustrator, is an Ithaca-based artist who paints peculiar creatures. "Vivalina Grows a Gourd!" is their first children's book. Graham Ottoson is the Empress of Gourdlandia, the legendary Ithaca institution where she grows gourds and turns them into marvelous works of art.
Book Title: Vivalina Grows a Gourd!
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Sara Catterall
Sara Catterall is the award-winning author of Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon. Her writing has appeared in The Sun magazine, and the NEH's Humanities Magazine, and she serves on the Executive Board of Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, NY.
Book Title: Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon
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Clare Jones
Clare Jones is a writer, editor, and educator. She has received grants and fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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Jada Simone
Jada Simone (aka a_note_from_jada), originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a local Ithaca-based poet and visual artist working in sculpture, painting, and performance mediums. A lifelong journaler, she took her words to the stage for the first time at a local open mic in 2023 with the launch of her first chapbook, "Unfollowed Into the Dark," in 2024. Her commitment to the creative process led to a deep involvement in the Ithaca poetry community by hosting community conversations, leading summer writing workshops at the Tompkins County Public Library, and even starting month-long poetry challenges on social media. She is passionate about sharing her love for poetry with others and hopes her work inspires others to do the same.
Connect with Simone on Instagram (@a_note_from_jada) or follow her blog at anotefromjada.wordpress.com
Book Title: Unfollowed Into the Dark
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Cathy Shipos
We Declare is an anthology of 50 pieces written by local writers who are part of Ellen Schmidt’s Writers' Room community. Pieces were written over the course of the past year in response to prompts taken from the Declaration of Independence.
Book Title: We Declare: A Storytelling Project for Our Times