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2023 LINEUP
READERS & PANELISTS
These authors, editors, panelists, and performers will all be featured March 31 - April 2, 2023
as part of the Northern Arizona Book Festival. Events will be held at various venues in Flagstaff and on Zoom.
Download/print the official 2023 poster now.
LEX ABBRUSCATO
Lex Abbruscato (she/they) was born and raised in New Jersey. She started writing poetry her junior year of high school. Since then she completed undergrad at NAU with a Bachelor in English and an emphasis in Creative Writing. She furthered her education during the pandemic and received her Master in the Arts of Teaching. Lex currently teaches English at Verrado High School and climbs lots of rocks in her spare time.
SHIPRA AGARWAL
Shipra Agarwal (she/her) is a doctor-turned-author who studied creative writing at Harvard. A Pushcart nominee, Shipra writes about the small towns of India, similar to the one she grew up in. A story from her WIP collection, That Thing We Don’t Talk About, was published in Witness and nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, 2023; another was shortlisted for the First Pages Prize, 2022, and was a semifinalist at the IHLR long story contest. Additionally, her work has been published in Janus Literary, Flash Flood, and an anthology. Shipra is an assistant fiction editor at Identity Theory, and fiction reader at Story. . In 2022, Shipra founded Lityatra, a platform to celebrate the journeys of BIPOC authors. She can be found hiking and kayaking in Arizona, and at www.shipraagarwal.com.
KIRSTEN JOHANNA ALLEN
Co-Executive Director and Publisher, Kirsten manages acquisitions, editing, production, and marketing for Torrey House Press. As co-founder, Kirsten has steered the press from its earliest inklings to publish conservation through literature to become the powerful platform for books and ideas about the natural world and the West that it is today. Kirsten holds a BA from Westminster College and an MPH from the University of Utah. She has two grown children and lives with a pair of cats and her spouse, Mark Bailey, in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah.
AKANKSHA AURORA
Akanksha Aurora (she/her) is a Mumbai-born, Los Angeles-based writer, standup comedian and storyteller. Akanksha’s Bollywood to Hollywood journey has been transformative, challenging and full of material - material that she’s brought to stage and screen in her performances across Los Angeles, Mumbai and Toronto, and in her writing experiences at Disney Channel, Moonbug Entertainment, Vulture, The Moth and the Women’s National Book Association. Akanksha also writes and produces a "Bollywood Fleabag" miniseries on TikTok, where she chronicles her experiences with immigration and cycle-breaking. She is currently working on and seeking representation for her short story collection, Manic Pixie Ethnic Girl.
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