from Somerville, MA

Jenny White is a writer and a social anthropologist. Her first novel, The Sultan’s Seal, was published in February 2006 (W. W. Norton). It has been translated into eleven languages and is available as an audiobook. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award. Booklist named it one of the top ten first novels of 2006 as well as one of the top ten historical novels of that year. The sequel, The Abyssinian Proof, will be out in February. Both are set in late nineteenth-century Istanbul. Jenny White also teaches social anthropology at Boston University and has published two scholarly books on contemporary Turkey. At various times, Jenny White has been a switchboard operator, bookkeeper, librarian, file clerk, language teacher, receptionist, patient associate, copyeditor, research assistant, teaching assistant, tour coordinator, professor, and now novelist. She lives in the Boston area and wavers between being exhausted and exhilarated.

                   from Cornwall, Vermont

Nancy Means Wright is the author of 14 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, including a YA novel (E.P. Dutton), a mystery novella, and 5 adult mystery novels (St. Martin’s Press), featuring earthy, hot-tempered Vermont dairy farmer, Ruth Willmarth—most recently, Mad Cow Nightmare.   Wright’s mother threw out her first (age 10) mystery about the kidnapping of a pestiferous older brother, but the author redeems herself with the middle grade mystery, The Pea Soup Poisonings, an *Agatha Award winner for 2006 Best Children’s/YA Mystery; a sequel is forthcoming.  Her short stories and poems have appeared in popular and literary magazines ( Seventeen, American Literary Review, Redbook, Yankee, et al., and in numerous anthologies (Beacon Press, St. Martin’s Press, U. of Illinois Press, etc).  A former Bread Loaf Scholar, grant winner from the Society of Children’s Book Writers, current scholar for the Vermont Humanities Council, and longtime English teacher, she lives in Cornwall, Vermont with her spouse and two Maine Coon cats. 

(You can visit her at www.nancymeanswright.com, or nancyden@shoreham.net).