These recently published authors will join Authors on the Move guests for conversation during the first two courses of a gourmet Farm-to-Fork meal, followed by a lively auction during the main course. With dessert, guests will enjoy award winning keynote author Hahrie Han, author of Undivided. Guests will have the opportunity to purchase a signed copy of any or all of our authors’ most recently published books. All books sales for the event will be offered through Capital Books. For more event information about the event, please visit Authors on the Move 2026.

Kemi Ashing-Giwa is an author and scientist-in-training based in Palo Alto. Her work includes the USA Today bestselling, Compton Crook Award-winning novel The Splinter in the Sky, the novella This World Is Not Yours, and The King Must Die. Her short fiction, which has been nominated for an Ignyte Award and featured on the Locus Recommended Reading List, has been reprinted in collections including Some of the Best from Tor.com: 15th Anniversary Edition and The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time. She is now pursuing a PhD in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at Stanford University. (kashinggiwa.com)

Matt Abraham is the recipient of the Pulp Detective’s Best Newcomer of 2015. He lives in Stockton, California where he splits his time between being a father, husband, and author. Currently he’s finishing his series, The Black Cape Case Files, which follows Dane Curse, a former villain turned PI, as he navigates the powered underbelly of Gold Coast City, and Northland Mysteries, which stars Detective Jake Carter and his partner Dr. Nafissa Rayan. www.mattabrahambooks.com

Enrique Baeza is a crime-fighter for the environment and a champion for vulnerable communities. He brings his real-life experience protecting communities from environmental crimes to his debut bilingual children’s book, That Environmental Crusader Could Be Me! When he’s not fighting pollution, Enrique stands up for immigrant families, marches for workers’ rights, and inspires children to become environmental heroes. He lives in Sacramento, California with his wife, Leticia, and their two sons, Maxton and Bronx. (cielitolindobooks.com)

Claire Booth is a journalist-turned-author whose writing career has taken her from Missouri to Washington, D.C., Florida, the Seattle area, and the Bay Area. She’s reported on many high-profile cases, including the Laci Peterson murder and the San Francisco dog mauling case. The case of a deadly cult leader became the subject of her nonfiction book, The False Prophet. After spending so much time covering crimes so strange and convoluted, they seemed more like fiction than reality, she had enough of the real world and decided to write novels instead. Her acclaimed Sheriff Hank Worth mystery series takes place in Branson, Missouri, where the small-town Ozarks meet big-city country music tourism. The latest, Throwing Shadows, is out now. (www.clairebooth.com)

Joe Clifford spent the 1990s as a homeless heroin addict in San Francisco before he got off the streets and turned his life around. His memoir, Junkie Love, chronicles his battle with drugs. Joe is the author of the award-winning Jay Porter thriller series, as well as several standalones, including Say My Name, All Who Wander, A Moth to Flame, and I Won’t Say a Word: A Say My Name Novel. He has also edited several various rock-and-roll-themed anthologies, including Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Stories Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. His latest release, Skeleton Theory, was published in November 2025. (www.joeclifford.com)

Kim Culbertson is the award-winning author of five young adult novels. Her first novel for adults, Other People’s Kids, was named a finalist for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance (CALIBA) 2025 Golden Poppy Award in fiction. In addition to teaching high school, Kim sits on the Writers Council for their National Writing Project and works as a fiction mentor with Dominican University of California’s MFA in Creative Writing. Her book 100-Word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing blends her two professional loves: teaching and writing. She lives in Nevada City, California. (www.kimculbertson.com)

Anne Da Vigo is an award-winning former police and court reporter who wrote about murder and mayhem for newspapers throughout California. She now writes fictional mysteries inspired by real events. Night Flight is her most recent thriller. The book is particularly vivid for her because the horrendous airplane crash that inspired it occurred in her home town of Denver, Colorado. The perpetrator, John Gilbert Graham, attended her church. While she didn’t know him, her extensive research revealed several threads of the real-life story that touched her life. She lives in Sacramento where she meets weekly with Monday Night Writers, a creative group she co-founded in 1994. (annedavigoauthor.com)

Andru Defeye is the Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus (2020–2024), a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and a recipient of the Key to the City for his visionary leadership at the intersection of poetry and public life. His cultural work has sparked citywide activations, youth-powered movements, and Sacramento’s first Poetry Week, bringing live poetry, curriculum, and celebration to thousands. A community strategist and creative force, Defeye is the founder of Zero Forbidden Goals (ZFG), a collective known for bold, participatory public art that bridges street and spirit. His latest book, Unlocked: The Laureate Years, chronicles five years of transformation, art as resistance, joy as survival, and poetry as a blueprint for community. (AndruDefeye.com)

Zusha Elinson, based in California, is a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal and writes about guns and violence. He grew up on a dirt road in upstate New York, graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked as a chimney sweep. Elinson has also written for the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times Bay Area section. He received a MacDowell Fellowship to complete the book. www.zushaelinson.com

Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson is a Japanese American author-illustrator of children’s books. The Mochi Makers received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, calling it “a storytelling treat.” It was a finalist for the 2024 Golden Poppy Awards and made the Asian Pacific American Library Association’s 2024 Best of the Best Booklist. Shell Song is inspired by the shells Sharon’s grandfather collected in incarceration camps in Hawai’i during World War II. A tribute to finding pieces of hope, big or small, even in the darkest of times, this book incorporates the actual shells, soil from the incarceration camps, and family fabrics in the artwork. In her work, Sharon is dedicated to creating space for diversity, beauty, and kindness. (www.sharonfj.com)

Angela Garcia is a professor of anthropology at Stanford University. Her most recent book, The Way That Leads Among The Lost: Life, Death and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos, explores the hidden world of anexos: informal treatment centers for alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness that are spread across Mexico City’s tenements and reach into the United States. Her first book The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande explores intergenerational heroin use and overdose among Hispanos in northern New Mexico. It received the prestigious Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing and the PEN Center USA’s University of California Exceptional First Book Award. It is one of the most widely taught contemporary books in anthropology. (angelagarcia.ink)

Jasmin Iolani Hakes is the author of The Pohaku and Hula, named a best debut novel of 2023 by Booklist and winner of HONOLULU Magazine’s Book of the Year (about Hawaiʻi). Born and raised in Hawaii, she is of mixed ethnicity and is a product of those who migrated to the Hawaiian Kingdom to labor in the sugarcane industry from across the world, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the Portuguese island of Madeira. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Lithub, and The Sacramento Bee. She is a recipient of the Best Fiction award from the Southern California Writers Conference, a Community of Writers LoJo Foundation Scholarship, a Writing by Writers Emerging Voices fellowship, and residencies from Hedgebrook, VCCA, and Storyknife. (www.jasminiolani.com)

Mackenzie Joy is a lot of things. A nerd and a doodler. A lifelong bookworm and volleyball-playing athlete. A passionate teacher and a wedding-dance-floor rock star. She loves playing with words, solving puzzles, and reading stories aloud at bedtime. As a storyteller, she wants to create and share stories that are quirky, hopeful, and make people think. She truly believes listening, making people smile, and learning can make the world a better place. Her heroes are Winnie the Pooh, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and her mema, Joy. She now lives on a little hill near Berkeley, California. She is represented by Kevin Lewis at Aevitas (previously EMLA) and types her smiley faces backwards (: (mackenziejoy.art)

Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist, storyteller, and writer born and raised in Albany, Georgia. She is a Hedgebrook Writing Residency alumna, and a 2018-19 Affiliate Artist at The Headlands Center for the Arts. The Peach Seed, her debut novel, was selected as a 2021 Top Ten Finalist in the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, for ELLE magazine’s 65 of the Best and Most Anticipated Books of 2023, ESSENCE magazine’s “15 New Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer,” and by Georgia Center for the Book as one of the 10 “2024 Books All Georgians Should Read.” The Peach Seed was longlisted for the Crooks Corner Prize, awarded annually to a debut novel set in the American South. anitagailjones.com

Jesse Katz is an award-winning journalist and author whose work encourages readers to stand in the shoes of the most vulnerable and stigmatized among us. His latest book, The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA, was awarded the 2024 Los Angeles Times book prize for current interest and the In the Margins award for social justice and advocacy. As a newspaper and magazine writer, he shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, received a PEN America literary award, and won a James Beard distinguished writing award. His work has appeared in the Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Writing, and Best American Sports Writing anthologies. Jesse previously taught creative writing to incarcerated youth in LA’s juvenile halls. (therentcollectors.com)

James L’Etoile uses his 29 years behind bars as an influence in his award-winning novels, short stories, and screenplays. He is a former associate warden in a maximum-security prison, a hostage negotiator, and director of California’s state parole system. His novels have been shortlisted for or awarded the Lefty, Anthony, Silver Falchion, Macavity, and the Public Safety Writers Awards. River of Lies and Sins of the Father are his most recent novels. Look for Illusion of Truth coming in 2026. James also serves as the Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. (www.jamesletoile.com)

Sheryl Lister is a multi-award-winning author who has enjoyed reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She writes sweet, sensual contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and women’s fiction. Her novels feature multi-faceted, intelligent, strong and slightly flawed heroes and heroines. A California native, Sheryl is a wife, mother of three daughters and a son-in-love, and grandmother. When she’s not writing, Sheryl can be found on a date with her husband or in the kitchen whipping up delicious meals and desserts to satisfy her inner foodie. (www.sheryllister.com)

Archana Maniar was born near Chicago to Indian immigrants and relocated with her parents to Mumbai at age four. After the culture shock abated, she fell in love with India until chance brought the family to California. Mumbai remained a frequent destination, however. She studied political theory and biology at UCLA before attending medical school at UC Davis. As a professor of medicine/infectious diseases physician, she was a front-line healthcare worker during the COVID-19 pandemic. Always a writer in the margins of her day, storytelling became a way to process her observations about human nature during health, stress, and sickness. When she’s not working or writing, she’s usually traveling with her family. Dry Spells is her debut novel. She is currently working on her second book. (archanamaniarbooks.com)

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the U.S. in 2010. A former linguistics professor, now a full-time fiction writer, she has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothrillers like Deep Beneath Us. These are set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California sneezedavissneeze. Between that lot, Catriona has been nominated for or won every available award in the crime-fiction world: Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Lefty, Mary Higgins Clark, and Dagger. (Ice-breaker question: why do the awards have those names?) Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime. (catrionamcpherson.com)

Karen A. Phillips lives in northern California and writes humorous, fun, action-packed mysteries. She has many short stories published in various anthologies. Her characters are engaging and fearless. The Rocky Nelson Boxing Mystery series features an amateur sleuth who boxes. Karen is a past president of Capitol Crimes, the Sacramento chapter of Sisters In Crime, and is a member of many other writing organizations. . . and yes, Karen does take boxing lessons. (karenaphillips.com)

Lally Pia is a child psychiatrist and an award-winning author. She was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Ghana, and navigated a botched Green Card, refugee status and a “dead end” job in which she removed heads to get off welfare before attending medical school at UC Davis. The Fortune Teller’s Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor was published by She Writes Press. Lally was a finalist in the nationwide talent search for America’s Next Great Author. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Sacramento Writers Club and is a volunteer faculty member for California Northstate University’s School of Medicine. Her next project is Andorea (psychological suspense). A Davis resident for 40 years, she lives with her husband, Tim, and dog, Zorro. (www.lallypia.com)

Tony Piedra grew up in hot, humid, Houston, Texas, catching lizards in the backyard and doodling in his sketchbook. Thirty years later, he still loves learning about animals and drawing, except now does it for a living, making picture books, like One Tiny Treefrog and Pau: The last song of the Kaua’i ‘o’o. In a previous chapter of his life, he helped make movies at Pixar Animation Studios. He lives, works, and plays in the San Francisco Bay Area with his creative partner and wife, Mackenzie Joy, and their baby boy. (Being a dad is awesome!) (tonypiedra.com)

Les Robinson is a life coach, mentor, and public speaker, often referred to as “Coach Rob.” He was born and raised in Sacramento and now is a pastor and community leader in Santa Clarita.
Besides his pastoral work and literary endeavors, Robinson has been involved in education and athletics, coaching football and track at several California high schools. Robinson’s personal journey became the impetus for writing Discovering Daniel Blue, the story of his great-great-great-grandfather, a former slave from Kentucky who came to Sacramento in 1849, discovered gold, and founded the first African American church west of the Mississippi River. Blue also funded and established the first school in California for minority students. This revelation has profoundly influenced Robinson’s understanding of his heritage and purpose. (N/A)

Terria Smith is a tribal member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and a proud original Californian. She is the editor of News from Native California magazine and director of the Berkeley Roundhouse, Heyday’s California Indian publishing program. Smith is also the editor of the 2023 anthology Know We Are Here: Voices of Native California Resistance. She received her undergraduate degree at Cal Poly Humboldt (formally Humboldt State University) and earned her master’s degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (heydaybooks.com)

Julia Park Tracey is an award-winning journalist and author. Inspired by a mysterious train receipt in her family’s scrapbook, she researched her Orphan Train roots and wrote The Bereaved. She has ancestors—or should we say an-sisters? Another such ancestor is the Puritan woman named Silence Greenleaf; look for Silence from Sibylline Press. New from Julia is Whoa, Nelly! —a contemporary journey into literary fandom by a lonely librarian who lives through her fixation on the Little House books. (juliaparktracey.substack.com)