The Rutgers University–New Brunswick Writers' Conference will feature speakers ranging from bestselling novelists to highly experienced field experts. For a full list of speakers and conference schedule, please visit our sessions page.
Keynote Speakers
Billy Collins
American phenomenon Billy Collins has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar. His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry. His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience – enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio – includes people of all backgrounds and age groups.
Collins has published twelve collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems, Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, Ballistics, Horoscopes for the Dead and Picnic, Lightning. A collection of his haiku, She Was Just Seventeen, was published by Modern Haiku Press in fall 2006. He has also published two chapbooks, Video Poems and Pokerface. In addition, he has edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006, and edited Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, illustrated by David Allen Sibley.
His book, Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems 2003 – 2013, was a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book of poetry is titled The Rain in Portugal, and is a New York Times bestseller. Collins has won numerous awards for his poetry and was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003.
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her latest novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.
She has contributed to The New Yorker, Elle, Outside, The New York Times, Harper's, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The Nation, and Real Simple, and regularly blogged for The Huffington Post.
In addition to adult novels, she has written several works of nonfiction, including Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, a history and anatomy of the novel as a form, and The Man Who Invented the Computer, an account of the complex and sometimes amazing circumstances that led to one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. She has also published a five volume horse series for young adults. Her most recent novels Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age comprise The Last Hundred Years trilogy covering one hundred years in the life of an Iowa family.
Presenters
Christopher Ernest Vogler
Christopher Vogler is a veteran story consultant for major Hollywood film companies and a respected teacher of filmmakers and writers around the globe. His book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers has helped to shape the way people in movies, TV, computer games and publishing think about stories and is required reading at many film schools and literature programs. He has influenced the screenplays of movies from The Lion King to Fight Club to The Thin Red Line. A native of St. Louis and a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Vogler served as a U.S. Air Force officer and made documentary films on the military space program before doing graduate work at the University of Southern California film school. He started work in the film industry as a story analyst for Twentieth Century Fox and went on to work for most of the major studios. As part of the animation story staff at Disney he influenced the scripts of The Lion King, Aladdin, and Hercules. His book, The Writer’s Journey, grew out of a short memo he wrote while at Disney, pointing out the usefulness of Joseph Campbell’s concept of The Hero’s Journey. The memo was influential and became part of Hollywood story lore, while the book is a standard text for literature students and storytellers in all media. In 1995 Vogler joined the Fox 2000 unit at 20th Century Fox and became a development executive, working on Courage Under Fire, Volcano, Anna and the King, Fight Club and The Thin Red Line. He was executive producer on Steve Guttenberg’s directing debut, P.S. Your Cat is Dead, and he wrote the screenplay for the German-French animated feature Jester Till. He has consulted on films such as 10,000 BC, Hancock, I am Legend, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, The Karate Kid remake, Helen Hunt’s directorial debut Then She Found Me, David O. Russell’s The Fighter, and Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. His latest book, co-written with Columbia University film professor David McKenna, is Memo from the Story Department: Secrets of Structure and Character, published by Michael Wiese Productions.
Daniel José Older
Daniel José Older is the award-winning author of both YA and adult books. His most recent book is Dactyl Hill Squad (Scholastic, 2018), his first middle grade book, which Publisher's Weekly called, "a delightful historical fantasy" in a starred review. The second book in the series, Dactyl Hill Squad Book 2: Freedom Fire, will be published by Scholastic in May 2019. The Book of Lost Saints (Macmillan), Older’s evocative multigenerational Cuban-American family story of revolution, loss, and family bonds will be published in November 2019. His New York Times bestselling Young Adult novel, Shadowshaper (Scholastic, 2016), was a New York Times Best Book of the Year. His other books include Shadowhouse Fall (Scholastic, 2017), Star Wars: Last Shot (Del Ray, April 2018), and the Bone Street Rumba novels, including Midnight Taxi Tango and Half-Resurrection Blues (Penguin). Winner of the International Latino Book Award, he has been nominated for the Kirkus Prize, the Locus and World Fantasy Awards, and the Andre Norton Award. Shadowshaper has been optioned by Tony-winning actress Anika Noni Rose. His journalism on social justice, diversity, and gentrification appears regularly in The Guardian. He offers multiple workshops on storycraft, as well as a series of workshops entitled, “Shape Your Shadow,” which engages diversity and literature in a much needed conversation. In a description of the workshop, Older notes, “Moving into a new era of a more equitable book world means strategizing new ways to change the demographics of writing and publishing, and lifting up voices that haven’t been heard enough.” He lives, writes, and composes music in New Orleans.
Eva Lesko Natiello
Eva Lesko Natiello is the award-winning author of New York Times and USA Today bestseller, The Memory Box, a self-published psychological thriller which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. The San Francisco Book Review says: "...be prepared to toss that suburban fairy tale away, grab on to the steering wheel, and hope that you get through this obstacle course with all your mental faculties . . . Eva Lesko Natiello shows tremendous talent and courage in her creation of a powerful dichotomy, reaching beyond boundaries." Eva draws on her 20+ years of experience in PR, marketing and branding to market her own books, offer private author consultations and teach workshops on devising and executing marketing plans that get books noticed, increasing the chances for success in an ever-expanding market. She is a sought after speaker on self-publishing and book marketing, and her articles have appeared in the HuffPost. Eva is thrilled to empower authors to create greater visibility for their books. She is a member of The Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Alliance of Independent Authors. Eva recently completed her forthcoming novel.
Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo's collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts for translation; his first collection Totem won the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University–Camden. His most recent book is Air Traffic, a memoir in essays.
Jamie Brickhouse
Jamie Brickhouse is the author of the critically acclaimed Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), which was an Amazon “Best Book of May 2015,” a Book Chase “2015 Nonfiction Top 10,” and it’s “Required Reading” in Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. It was critically-acclaimed by publications such as the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, and Out. His essays and articles have been published multiple times in the New York Times, as well as the International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Daily Beast, Salon, and Huffington Post. A comedic storyteller, Brickhouse is also a four-time Moth StorySLAM champ, has recorded voices on Beavis and Butthead, appeared on PBS-TV’s Stories from the Stage, and is the writer and performer of an award-winning solo show based on Dangerous When Wet, as well as the award-winning solo show I Favor My Daddy, based on the forthcoming memoir about his father Earl. He grew up in Beaumont, Texas, graduated from Trinity University and lives with his common-law husband Michael in New York City. You can find Brickhouse on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube @jamiebrickhouse, or www.jamiebrickhouse.com.
Jeffrey Scott Copeland
Jeffrey S. Copeland has authored and edited over thirty books, including Plague in Paradise: The Black Death in Los Angeles, 1924: Inman's War: A Soldier's Story of Life in a Colored Battalion in WWII; Olivia's Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley v. Kraemer; Shell Games: The Life and Times of Pearl McGill, Industrial Spy and Pioneer Labor Activist; Ain't No Harm to Kill the Devil: The Life and Legend of John Fairfield, Abolitionist for Hire; I'm Published! Now What? An Author's Guide to Creating Successful Book Events, Readings, and Promotions, and Finding Fairfield. He has also conducted over three hundred book readings/events world-wide and loves the “travel and jazz” of a writer’s life on the road. In the world of writing, Literary Nonfiction is his true love. When not writing, he is a professor at the University of Northern Iowa. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa and St. Louis, Missouri.
Jenny Johnson
Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet, published by Sarabande Books in 2017. In both their lyrical force and breathtaking formal sophistication, her poems are powerful meditations on love, the body, queer culture and identity, vulnerability and community. Featured in both the New York Times and by the Academy of American Poets, In Full Velvet was one of the most highly praised collections of 2017. Johnson’s honors include a 2015 Whiting Award and a 2016-17 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. She has also received awards and scholarships from the Blue Mountain Center, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, New England Review, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. After earning a BA/MT in English Education from the University of Virginia, she taught public school for several years in San Francisco, and spent ten summers on the staff of the UVA Young Writer’s Workshop. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. A contributing editor at Waxwing Literary Journal, she teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program.
Jez Lowe
Jez Lowe is a singer, writer and broadcaster, from County Durham in North East England. His writing is inspired by the rich folk traditions of his native area, both in song and more recently in fiction. He has released more than twenty albums of original music over the last thirty years, and has now published two novels. He is also a regular writer and broadcaster for BBC Radio, and performs in concert all over the world. His compositions have been recorded by over a hundred of his fellow artists.
Meg Fee
Meg Fee is a Texas-born writer who spent her formative adult years in NYC. In 2018 she published her first book, a memoir, with Icon Books. The book was based on a small collections of essays she published in ebook form on her personal blog in 2015. That ebook led to a Twitter message from a publishing house in the UK, and the rest is - as they say - history. In 2019 Meg graduated with a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, and she now works as a Design Researcher and Strategist for The New York Times.
Sarah Weinman
Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, An Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece, which was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, BuzzFeed, The National Post, Literary Hub, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vulture, and won the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Crime Writing. She also edited the anthologies Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin), as well as the forthcoming Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession (Ecco, July 2020). Weinman has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, New York, and many other outlets, including CrimeReads, where she is a columnist and contributing editor. Weinman also writes the “Crime Lady” newsletter, covering crime fiction, true crime, and all points in between. She lives in New York City.
The Book Doctors
Arielle Eckstut is a co-founder of The Book Doctors, a company dedicated to helping authors get their books published. She is also a co-author of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, 2010). Arielle Eckstut has been a literary agent for over 20 years at The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. She is now the agent of Newberry award winner, Alexander. She is also the author of nine books and the co-founder of the iconic brand, LittleMissMatched. She’s taught their workshop on how to get published everywhere from Stanford University to Smith College. She has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to NPR’s Morning Edition to USA Today.
David Henry Sterry is a co-founder of The Book Doctors, a company dedicated to helping authors get their books published. He is also a co-author of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, 2010). He is the best-selling author of 16 books, on a wide variety of subjects including memoir, sports, YA fiction and reference. His first book has been translated into 10 languages, his latest book was featured on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. He’s taught their workshop on how to get published everywhere from Stanford University to Smith College. He has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to NPR’s Morning Edition to USA Today.