Christopher Riley

Christopher Riley is a professional screenwriter who co-wrote the award-winning German language courtroom thriller After the Truth with his wife, Kathy Riley. The Rileys have written scripts for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Mandalay Television Pictures, the late Sean Connery’s Fountainbridge Films, and Robert Cort Productions. 

Christopher produced the independent action-thriller Red Line and executive produced the web series Bump+. He is the author of the classic screenplay format guide The Hollywood Standard, now in its third edition, and teaches screenwriting at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His latest book, which he co-wrote with his wife Kathy, is “The Defining Moment: How Writers and Actors Build Characters.” 

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Eric Wilson

Eric Wilson is the author of over twenty books, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as five movie novelizations including Facing the Giants and Flywheel. His third novelization, Fireproof, earned him a spot on the New York Times Bestseller list for 13 weeks.

Eric has released two suspense novels with Bay Forest Books, One Step Away and Two Seconds Late. His nonfiction includes Taming the Beast: The Untold Story of Team Tyson, released in 2014, as well as From Chains to Change, a memoir he co-wrote with Steven Allen Young, founder of Home Street Home Ministries. He is finishing Six Little Words: How One Simple Question Transformed Lives Around the World, as well as American Leftovers: Surviving Family, Religion, & the American Dream, a family memoir written with his younger sister and brother.

Eric was born in California, but now lives in Nashville with his wife, songwriter Carolyn Rose. Together they have two grown daughters and two grandchildren.

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Will Storr

Will Storr is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Sunday Times, New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is the author of five critically acclaimed books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Science of Storytelling. His latest release is The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It.

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Jennifer Fawcett

Playwright and debut novelist Jennifer Fawcett grew up in rural Eastern Ontario and spent many years in Canada making theatre before coming to the United States. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the anthology Long Story Short. She teaches writing at Skidmore College and lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

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Kate Elliott

New York Times bestselling novelist Kate Elliott has been making up stories about escape into worlds of adventure and transformative change since she was a child growing up in rural Oregon. In this conversation, we talk fantasy, world building, and her latest book SERVANT MAGE. (Plus what outrigger canoes can teach you about characterization in fantasy stories!)

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Jonathan Gottschall

Jonathan Gottschall is a distinguished research fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College and is the author of The Storytelling Animal, a New York TimesEditor's Choice and finality for the LA Times Book Prize, and The Professor in the Cage, one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of the year, as well as his latest release, The Story Paradox. He has written for or been covered in the New York Times, Scientific American, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Millions. Gottschall has also appeared on popular podcasts like Star Talk, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Radiolab. He lives in Pennsylvania.

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David Novak

David Novak is Artistic Director of A Telling Experience, telling stories to enrich discourse, entertain imagination, engage emotion, and discover our common ground. He has been described as a “master of literary collage” for his unique narrative style. David is an internationally touring storyteller and veteran of the National Storytelling Festival as well as a recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. He keynotes for numerous library and educational conferences, including the Sydney International Storytelling Conference, Czech Children’s Theatre Festival, and American Alliance for Theatre in Education. David lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

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Jess Montgomery

Having grown up within a rich storytelling tradition of hearing traditional ballads and stories, Jess Montgomery found herself pursuing writing at an early age. Now, as a historical mystery author, she pens stories that feature strong female leads and deep universal themes. Listen in as she shares her thoughts about character arcs, inviting the Muse in, and the important of “not thinking about the gold.” 

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Jeff Ayers

Jeff Ayers has been a freelance writer and reviewer since 1999. He has reviewed for Library Journal, where he is a former Fiction Reviewer of the Year, for Booklist, and for The Associated Press.

Jeff recently retired from his reference librarian position after almost 30 years after interviewing hundreds of authors in print, audio, and video, including James Patterson, Harlan Coben, and Dan Brown. In addition to this and moderating panels at BookExpo America, ThrillerFest, and various other conferences, he has published several titles in both fiction and nonfiction, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion, where he covered over 550 novels and interviewed over 350 people, including William Shatner. He currently has several manuscripts out for submission and is under contract for a nonfiction book for Grand Central Publishing.

Jeff is a Co-Executive Director of ThrillerFest, the annual conference for the International Thriller Writers.

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