PREsenters
& authors
JENNIFER ADAMS is a writer, editor, and bookseller. She is the author of more than 50 books, including the best-selling BabyLit board books, which introduce small children to classic literature and have sold more than 2 million copies. Jennifer works weekends at The King's English Bookshop.
Jennifer received her BA in English literature from the University of Washington and her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She loves letterpress printing, cattails, dragonflies, beautifully wrapped packages, and the first snowfall in winter.
NOAH BASKETT is The Salt Lake City Public Library Executive Director. Baskett most recently worked as the Vice President of Operations for Leadership Foundations in Tacoma, Washington – a global network of community-based leadership development organizations. Before that, he worked as the Senior Director of Community Engagement for the Tacoma Rescue Mission, the Senior Programs Officer for Northwest Leadership Foundation, and served as a volunteer with AmeriCorps. Baskett grew up in Salt Lake City. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Puget Sound and a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership from Seattle University.
STEPHANIE BEARCE is the award-winning author of 35 books for children. She loves digging through dirt for fossils, exploring haunted hotels and castles, and doing science experiments that explode. A former teacher with 25 years of experience in the classroom, Stephanie loves to visit schools, libraries, literature festivals, and homeschool co-ops.
When she is not writing, researching, or testing new crafts and experiments, Stephanie loves to travel. She does her globe-trotting with her husband, Darrell, who is an actual rocket scientist.
BARBARA JONES BROWN is the director of Signature Books. Previously she was the executive director of the Mormon History Association, historical director of Better Days 2020, and content editor of the award-winning Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008). She is co-author of the book’s sequel, Vengeance Is Mine, The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath (May 2023). Brown earned a Master’s degree in American history from the University of Utah and a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Brigham Young University. Besides her family, her passions in life include skiing, any sport in the ocean, and yes, archival research.
CAL CROSBY, co-owner of Salt Lake City's The King's English Bookshop and Executive Director of Brain Food Books, a 501c3 putting new books into the hands of those without regular access, has been building community in bookselling for 30 + years. He has been a Book Industry Charitable Foundation Executive Board Member, a 20222 Duende-Word BIPOC Leadership Award winner, and a juror for the 2023 National Book Award Foundation’s Fiction Category. Calvin was honored as the 2023 University of Utah’s Native Excellence Community Partner. His commitment to building equity around books and reading in communities without libraries, bookstores, or consistent access has been a lifelong mission. As a member of the Cherokee Nation, he believes in Land Back one Independent Bookstore at a time.
STACIE SHANNON DENETSOSIE (Diné) is Todích'íí'nii (Bitterwater Clan), born for Naakaii (Mexican Clan). She is a fiction writer and poet. Stacie is from Kayenta, Arizona, but currently resides in Northern Utah with her husband and cat. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and her Master of Arts from Utah State University. Her work has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Phoebe Magazine, and Cut Bank, among other publications.
Her debut “The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories” was named a 2024 Southwest Book of the Year, was a 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize finalist, and a Gold Forward INDIES award winner.
LAURIE LEE HALL was raised in New England and trained in architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her career included managing design and construction programs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Chief Architect. She simultaneously served in several ecclesiastical leadership capacities until her church excommunicated her following her gender transition. Since then she has served in the Executive Committee of Affirmation LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends. In 2023, she became the first transgender recipient of Affirmation’s Paul Mortensen Award for leadership within the LGBTQ/Mormon-adjacent community. She and her partner, Nancy Beaman, live in Kentucky and are the parents of nine children and twenty-four grandchildren.
ALLISON HONG MERRILL was born and raised in Taiwan and arrived in the U.S. at twenty-two as a university student. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and writes in both Chinese and English, both fiction and nonfiction. Her work appears in the New York Times and HuffPost and has won both national and international literary prizes. Her debut memoir, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops, launched in September 2021 and continues to win book awards.
Allison is a keynote speaker, an instructor, and a panelist at various writer’s conferences both in the U.S. and in Asia. She also appears on TV, radio, and podcasts; in magazines, newspapers, and journals.
MARCI KAY MONSON is an avid reader, crafter, and gardener. She received her BS in Technical Communications from Utah State University and a graduate certificate in publishing from the Denver Publishing Institute. She found a love for Agatha Christie when her book club read And Then There Were None and never looked back. She loves story, bright colors, and a little bit of (cozy and fictional) murder. Raised in Japan, England, and Germany, she now lives with her dog Suki in Layton, Utah.
WILL NEVILLE-REHBEHN directs fundraising, marketing, and community development and works with publisher Kirsten Allen and creative director Kathleen Metcalf on acquisitions, always seeking to advance THP’s mission and impact. Throughout his career, he has helped organizations expand their capabilities, engage new audiences and tell stories that change the world. He received a BA in Theatre from Davidson College and a master’s in Political Management from The George Washington University. A Utah native and lifelong book nerd, Will returned to Salt Lake City in 2020 with his husband, their young son and very old cat.
KAITLYN MAHONEY is the owner of Under the Umbrella Bookstore. They identify primarily as queer, but specifically as pansexual and agender/genderqueer. Those are words they didn't know existed 10 years ago, and books helped them learn about their own identity as well as those of people around them.
LISA MANGUM has loved and worked with books ever since elementary school, when she volunteered at the school library during recess. Her first paying job was shelving books at the Sandy Library. She worked for five years at Waldenbooks while she attended the University of Utah, graduating with honors with a degree in English. An avid reader of all genres, she has worked in the publishing department for Deseret Book since 1997. Besides books, Lisa loves movies, sunsets, spending time with her family, trips to Disneyland, and vanilla ice cream topped with fresh raspberries. She lives in Taylorsville with her husband, Tracy.
CHAD MORRIS loves the VR set he got for Christmas and is much better at it than he is at video games, but that’s still not saying much. Still he would love to try to keep his balance on Skatecoaster, laugh like crazy in The Furriest, and punch light blasts at alien bugs in Infestation ExtermiNation. He occasionally dances in public, and he’s pretty terrible at social media.
BRANDON MULL is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Fablehaven, Beyonders, and Five Kingdoms series. A kinetic thinker, Brandon enjoys bouncy balls, squeezable stress toys, and popping bubble wrap. He lives in Utah in a happy little valley near the mouth of a canyon with his four children and a dog named Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Brandon loves meeting his readers and hearing about their experiences with his books.
ZAK PODMORE is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about water and conservation issues in the western United States. He is the author of Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West and his work has appeared in Outside, USA Today, National Geographic Traveler, and elsewhere. He lives in Bluff, Utah.
PAISLEY REKDAL is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven collections of poetry, including West: A Translation, which was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Poetry and won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, The New Republic, and on National Public Radio, among others. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she teaches in the Creative Writing Program and directs the American West Center. Between 2017-2022, she served as Utah's Poet Laureate, receiving a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She currently serves as poetry editor for High Country News, and as co-chair of PEN America's Utah Chapter.
JEDEDIAH ROGERS is an environmental and public historian of modern America with interests in the intersection of land, culture, and religion in the American West. Along colleague Holly George, Rogers is a Senior State Historian at the Utah Division of State History and co-managing editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly. He lives in Salt Lake City.
SChedule
