Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

Kalynn Bayron is a New York Times and Indie bestselling author whose most recent book for young adults is Sleep Like Death. She is also a classically trained vocalist and musical theater enthusiast. When she's not writing you can find her watching scary movies and spending time with her family. 

Allison Butler, PhD, is the author of multiple books on media literacy and education, including The media and me: A guide to critical media literacy; Surveillance education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools; and, most recently, The judgment of gender: How pop culture centers and silences women.

SL Carroll (she / her) is a Brooklyn-based writer and multimedia artist. Her short story ‘Vanishing Act’ won first prize in swamp pink's Crazyshorts! fiction contest in 2021 and her short film ‘Altar Ego’ was screened in 2022 at Watershed Studios (Galway, Ireland). She is the author of The Art of Conjuring.

Ellen David Friedman is a retired organizer with the Vermont affiliate of the National Education Association. She is the author of Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard (PM Press, 2026).

Eli Friedman teaches in the department of Global Labor and Work at Cornell University. He is the translator of Involution: A Worker Inquiry Amid China's Youth Unemployment Wave (Verso 2026) and the co-author of China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry (Haymarket Books 2024).

Mischa Geracoulis is the Senior Manager of Engagement at Project Censored. She is a contributor to Project Censored’s “State of the Free Press” yearbook series and a Project Judge. She is the author of Media Framing and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage: News Narratives about Artsakh and Gaza (Routledge, 2025).

Madeleine Hamlin is assistant professor of geography at Colgate University. Her research examines the intersection of housing and the carceral state in US cities. In 2021, she was named an Emerging Scholar by the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation. Her work has been published in Antipode, Progress in Human Geography, and Urban Geography, among other outlets.

Alyssa Hassan is the Associate Director of Marketing at Beacon Press. She has spent her 25+ year career working to uplift voices speaking out against injustices and to inspire change in the world. If she ever writes a book, it will be called "It's uh-LEE-suh: A Memoir."

Leigh Hays writes sapphic love stories about women navigating family, career, and community. She likes to write complicated characters and makes them earn their joy. She lives and works in upstate New York with her wife, son, and their cats.

Eleanor is the author of the memoir Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2021 by Vogue; and the novels The Twelve-Mile Straight, and Ten Thousand Saints. A Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College and a 2024 NYFA Fellow in Fiction, she will publish her next novel, The Galaxy, in August 2027.

Nolan Higdon is the co-author of The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People (Triangle Square / Seven Stories Press, 2022) and Surveillance Education Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools (Routledge, 2025).

Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. He also serves as the Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and Professor of Journalism. He coedits the annual volume of the Censored book series with associate director Andy Lee Roth, published by Seven Stories Press in New York, and since 2021 with The Censored Press, the Project’s new publishing imprint.

Brian Hugenbruch’s fiction has most recently appeared in Analog, Hell Itself, and Abyss & Apex; his 2021 story, "Foster-Child of Silence and Slow Time," was a WSFA Best Short Fiction Finalist. His poetry has been nominated for the Rhyslings, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net; and his chapbook, WHILE CHANGING LANES, is available from Bottlecap Press.

Danielle King is General Manager of Left Bank Books (St. Louis, MO). Previously, they worked at Left Bank Books as part-time bookseller, full-time Used Books buyer, & assistant manager; the bookstore saved them from graduate school, and they're ever-thankful! They can occasionally be found sneaking into the bookstore's IG reels, on a panel, or buried under the capsized pile that is their eternally growing TBR.

Kevin Lin is an activist and researcher on labor and capitalism in China. He is the managing editor of Asian Labour Review. He is also a co-author of China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry (Haymarket Books, 2024) and an a co-editor of The China Question: Toward Left Perspectives (Verso, 2022).

Patricia Lockwood is the author of the novel No One is Talking About This, a finalist for the Booker Prize; the memoir Priestdaddy, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review; and the poetry collection Balloon Pop Outlaw Black. Lockwood’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.

Nina McConigley is the author of How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder and the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which was the winner of the PEN Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Orion, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and American Short Fiction among other outlets.

Bestselling author of genre-blending novels for the adult and young adult market, Bethany C Morrow penned Mem, A Song Below Water, Cherish Farrah among others. Her latest is a Churchianity Horror from Tor/Nightfire called The Body. She is one of USA Today's 100 Black Writers You Should Know.

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Svante Myrick is the president of People For the American Way, sustaining the vision of People For’s founder, iconic television producer Norman Lear, who created People For to counter right-wing extremism and religious bigotry.

Marion Nestle is a Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell and the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University. She is the author of several prize-winning books, including Food Politics, Safe Food, and What To Eat. She has received the Edinburgh Medal and the James Beard Leadership Award, among other honors.

Gina Nutt is the author of Night Rooms (Two Dollar Radio) and the publisher of Terrazzo Editions. Her writing has appeared in Forever, Joyland, The Rose Books Reader, and Southwest Review. She lives and dreams in Ithaca, New York.

Julian Plum is an illustrator and author with a deep love of colors, stories, and creatures. He can be found at every art market in Ithaca, but also in Newfield with his spouse and cats, illustrating warm, colorful worlds in gouache. His first illustrated book, Whose Tree Is This? came out in April 2026. When he’s not painting, he wanders the woods making friends with ferns and slugs.

Gretchen Purser is an associate professor in the Sociology Department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Her work has been recognized with a wide variety of publication awards from the American Sociological Association’s sections on Labor and Labor Movements, Marxist Sociology, Sociology of Human Rights, and Public Sociology.

Aurora Rey is a college dean by day and a life coach and award-winning author of queer romance the rest of the time, except when she’s puttering in the kitchen, riding the tractor, or pining for goats. Her latest, Under Construction, features former high school rivals teaming up to renovate a historic building to open a books store.

Anna Shechtman is an Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell, specializing in media studies and American literature. She is currently working on a history of the media and data concepts in the United States. She writes monthly crossword puzzles for the New Yorker, and her first book, "The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle" was published by HarperCollins in 2024.

Hillary is a lifelong book lover from a family of readers. She is Southern Pomo and Coastal Miwok and a member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians. She has worked in bookstores since 2009 and loves how books forge connections.

Dana Spiotta is the author of five novels, most recently Wayward. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and the St. Francis College Literary Prize. Her novels have been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She teaches in the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program.

D.A. Xiaolin Spires  writes speculative fiction, non-fiction and poetry, teaches martial arts and languages, crafts fantastical paintings and ceramics, draws comics and relishes gastronomic adventures.

Keith Stahl is a former restaurateur who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University and Writers Voice. He is the author of the poetry collection From the Gunroom. Originally from Litchfield, Connecticut, he lives in Skaneateles, New York.

Isabel Sterling writes stories about queer love and resilience with a witty magical twist. She is the author of several YA and adult novels, including: These Witches Don’t Burn, The Coldest Touch, and With All My Haunted Heart. Isabel is also a master certified life coach, the founder of The Confident Author Academy, and the host of The Author Burnout Cure podcast.

Lisa is the Executive Director of Ithaca's Nonprofit Independent Bookstore, Buffalo Street Books.

Cat Willett is an illustrator and author based in Brooklyn, NY. Her new book, Unconditional, Stories of Women and the Animals They Love, is an intimate and moving collection of stories about women and their life-changing relationships with animals, told in vivid graphic novel style.

Ithaca Resident and aspiring author. I read and write mostly speculative fiction and poetry.

Risa Wolf is a multi-gendered water elemental disguised as an ink-stained lycanthrope. (Don't tell their spouse or dogs; the disguise is working.) They publish speculative short stories in online magazines like Clarkesworld and Diabolical Plots, and they used to imagine houses for book-ghosts for a living.

Keegan is a systems-impacted fiction writer/poet who earned two degrees while incarcerated, he works with systems-impacted people as a community educator, and he performs poetry at local open mic nights and helps host monthly Punk & Poetry in Ithaca, NY.

At Autumn Leaves, we believe that there is nothing more important than the freedom of knowledge. That's why we're proud to have a diverse selection of new and used books, from fiction and poetry, to philosophy and politics, to cookbooks and music history. We are especially proud of our large selection of Buddhist literature—one of the largest in the state—and anarchist literature, much of which is published by PM Press, the owners of Autumn Leaves.

Beacon Press is an independent publisher of serious non-fiction. Our books often change the way readers think about fundamental issues; they promote such values as freedom of speech and thought; diversity, religious pluralism, and anti-racism; and respect for diversity in all areas of life.

Black Walnut Books in Glens Falls, NY focuses on empowering, sharing and amplifying Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) and queer communities, voices and authors.

Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca's nonprofit independent bookstore.

Burning Books is a radical bookstore in Buffalo, NY. Their curation matches their mission of social justice and sustainability.

Cornell University Press, established in 1869, is the first American university press. Cornell University Press fosters a culture of broad and sustained inquiry through the publication of scholarship that is engaged, influential, and of lasting significance.

Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago.

Ink Alchemy Books is an independent publisher based in Ithaca, NY. We are committed to giving new writers a platform to begin their publishing journey.

The New Press amplifies progressive voices for a more inclusive, just, and equitable world. As a nonprofit public-interest publisher, we leverage books, diverse voices, and media engagement to facilitate social change, enrich public discourse, and defend democratic values

Odyssey Bookstore, named in honor of Ithaca and the original connections to The Odyssey, is a local bookstore celebrating what is special and unique about our town.

PM Press is an independent, radical publisher of critically necessary books for our tumultuous times. Our aim is to deliver bold political ideas and vital stories to all walks of life and arm the dreamers to demand the impossible.

Riot Act is a volunteer-run book shop out of Binghamton, NY, working to provide our community with relevant and affordable reading material that educates, agitates, and inspires positive change.

Saddle Road Press is a small literary press located near Ithaca, New York. We publish full-length poetry collections, poetry chapbooks, literary fiction, essays, memoir, and hybrid forms, in both print and eBook editions.

Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.

Meet authors, buy their books, get them signed.

Specializing in all kinds of graphic novel collections.

Project Censored’s mission is to promote critical media literacy, independent journalism, and civic engagement.

The Durland Alternatives Library is a small non-profit library that serves the Ithaca, Cornell, and Tompkins County communities.

Live, Local, and Commercial-Free.

The Riverwood family listens to our customers and actively pursues their needs, providing a unique shopping experience. You will never leave feeling ignored, or bored, that is a promise.

All My Friends Books is an independent bookstore in Central New York, with locations in downtown Cortland and Skaneateles.

Spreading wings one story at a time.

Welcome to Duck Prints Press LLC, an independent small press dedicated to publishing original works by fanwork creators!

Ember Wyk creates small-batch, clean burning candles inspired by fantasy worlds and cozy reading rituals.

is a mobile pop-up used bookstore and record shop based nearby in the Finger Lakes/Corning region, focusing on dog-eared paperbacks, vintage vinyl, and music culture.