2022 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
It is a distinct honor to announce that this year’s guest of honor is C.J. Box, and the international guest of honor is David Trimble, Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey.
It is a distinct honor to announce that this year’s guest of honor is C.J. Box, and the international guest of honor is David Trimble, Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey.
C.J. Box
Ruth Dudley Edwards
Trace Conger
Barbara Peters
Charles Todd
SJ Rozan
John Gilstrap
Reavis Z. Wortham
C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum as well as the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel by the Western Writers of America in 2017. Over seven million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad and they’ve been translated into 27 languages.
Wolf Pack, the 19th Joe Pickett novel, was published March or 2019 and debuted at #2 on the New York Times Bestseller list and remained on the list for five consecutive weeks.
Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he owned an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and currently serves on the Wyoming Office of Tourism Board. They have three daughters and two grandchildren. He and his wife Laurie live on their small ranch in Wyoming.
He’s an Executive Producer for BIG SKY on ABC TV which is based on his Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell novels as well as EP for the upcoming Joe Pickett television series for Paramount TV.
Trace Conger is an award-winning author in the crime, thriller, and suspense genres. He writes the Connor Harding (Thriller) series and the Mr. Finn (PI) series.
His Connor Harding series follows freelance “Mirage Man” Connor Harding as he solves problems for the world’s most dangerous criminals. The Mr. Finn series follows private investigator Finn Harding as he straddles the fine line between right and wrong.
Conger won a Shamus Award for his debut novel, THE SHADOW BROKER. His suspense novella, THE WHITE BOY, won the Fresh Ink Award for Best Novella of 2020.
He is known for his tight writing style, dark themes, and subtle humor. Trace lives in Cincinnati with his wonderfully supportive family.
Visit him online at www.traceconger.com.
Charles Todd live on the east coast of the United States. He is a New York Times Best Selling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge Series and the Bess Crawford series. A Fatal Lie (Rutledge) 2-16-21 and An Irish Hostage (Bess Crawford) 7-6-21. He has published over thirty titles including two stand-alone novels, an anthology of short stories and over twenty short stories appearing in mystery magazines’ and anthologies worldwide. His works have received the Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha, and Barry awards along with nominations for the Anthony, Edgar, and Dagger awards.
John Gilstrap is the New York Times bestselling author of 21 thrillers, including Hellfire, Total Mayhem, Scorpion Strike,Final Target, Friendly Fire, Nick of Time, Against All Enemies, End Game, Soft Targets, High Treason, Damage Control, Threat Warning, Hostage Zero, No Mercy, Nathan’s Run, At All Costs, Even Steven, Scott Free and Six Minutes to Freedom. Prior to the beginning of his writing career, John served 15 years in the fire and rescue service.
Four of John’s books have been purchased or optioned for the Big Screen. In addition, he has written four screenplays for Hollywood, adapting the works of Nelson DeMille, Norman McLean and Thomas Harris.
A frequent speaker at literary events, John also teaches seminars on suspense writing techniques at a wide variety of venues, from local libraries to The Smithsonian Institution. Outside of his writing life, John is a renowned safety expert with extensive knowledge of explosives, weapons systems, hazardous materials, and fire behavior. John lives in Fairfax, VA.
Two time Spur Award winning author Reavis Z. Wortham pens the Texas Red River historical mystery series, and the high-octane Sonny Hawke contemporary western thrillers. The Red River books are set in rural Northeast Texas in the 1960s. Kirkus Reviews listed his first novel in a Starred Review, The Rock Hole, as one of the “Top 12 Mysteries of 2011.”
His Sonny Hawke series from Kensington Publishing features Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke and debuted in 2018 with Hawke’s Prey. Hawke’s War, the second in this series won the Spur Award from the Western Writers Association of America as the Best Mass Market Paperback of 2019. He also garnered a second Spur for Hawke’s Target in 2020.
A frequent speaker at literary events across the country. Reavis also teaches seminars on mystery and thriller writing techniques at a wide variety of venues, from local libraries to writing conventions, to the Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, SC. He frequently speaks to smaller groups, encouraging future authors, and offers dozens of tips for them to avoid the writing pitfalls and hazards he has survived. His most popular talk is entitled, My Road to Publication, and Other Great Disasters.
He has been a newspaper columnist and magazine writer since 1988, penning over 2,000 columns and articles, and has been the Humor Editor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine for the past 25 years. He and his wife, Shana, live in Northeast Texas. All his works are available at your favorite online bookstore or outlet, in all formats. Check out his website at www.reaviszwortham.com.
“Burrows, Wortham’s outstanding sequel to The Rock Hole combines the gonzo sensibility of Joe R. Lansdale and the elegiac mood of To Kill a Mockingbird to strike just the right balance between childhood innocence and adult horror.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The cinematic characters have substance and a pulse. They walk off the page and talk Texas.”
—The Dallas Morning News
On his most recent Red River novel, Laying Bones:
“Captivating. Wortham adroitly balances richly nuanced human drama with two-fisted action, and displays a knack for the striking phrase (‘R.B. was the best drunk driver in the county, and I don’t believe he run off in here on his own’). This entry is sure to win the author new fans.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Well-drawn characters and clever blending of light and dark kept this reader thinking of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine
SJ Rozan is author of eighteen novels and over seventy short stories, and editor of two anthologies. She has won multiple awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, Macavity; Japanese Maltese Falcon; and the Private Eye Writers of America Life Achievement Award. SJ lectures and teaches widely, including such positions as Workshop Leader at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy; Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida; and Writer-in-Residence at Singapore Management University. Her latest book is FAMILY BUSINESS (Dec. 2021) and her website is www.sjrozan.net.
Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, educated at University College Dublin and Cambridge University, has lived in London for most of her life and since 1979 has been a biographer, historian, freelance journalist and broadcaster. The targets of her twelve satirical crime novels include academia (British and American), gentlemen’s clubs, the House of Lords, publishing, and literary prizes. Murdering Americans (set in Indiana) and Killing the Emperors(a black comedy about the lunacy of conceptual art) won Last Laugh Awards. In the midst of non-fiction work she has been struggling with a satire on supine academics, cancel culture and campus wokery but has given up for now because satire is temporarily dead. Her leisure pursuits are friends and laughter. You can find her at www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk, on twitter @RuthDE and on Facebook.
Barbara Peters holds a BA from Stanford University, MA from Northwestern University, MSLS from the University of Tennessee. After careers at the Library of Congress and in law, she moved to Arizona and founded The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in 1989—run as a not-for-profit corporation. In 1997 she and her husband Robert L. Rosenwald founded Poisoned Pen Press, now the mystery imprint at Sourcebooks.
Barbara was nominated for a 1998 Edgar Allan Poe Award, has received the Mystery Writers of America’s Raven Award (bookselling) and Ellery Queen Award (editing), has earned a dozen nominations as Bookseller of the Year, and a 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award /Million Dollar Club from the Arizona Republic. The Poisoned Pen has frequently been named Best Bookstore in Phoenix and in Scottsdale by the Arizona Republic and New Times.