Our Authors

Hala Alyan
Literary novelist and author of THE ARSONISTS' CITY (shortlisted for the Aspen Prize) and SALT HOUSES (winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and Arab American Book Award). Alyan is also an award-winning poet, who is often published in The New Yorker magazine. Her most recent collections include THE MOON THAT TURNS YOU BACK and THE TWENTY-NINTH YEAR.

Paul Austin
Author of two memoirs: SOMETHING FOR THE PAIN: An Emergency Room Doctor's Story and BEAUTIFUL EYES (Norton).

Katherine Benton Cohen
Katherine Benton-Cohen is associate professor of history at Georgetown University. She is the author of INVENTING THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy and BORDERLINE AMERICANS: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Harvard University Press).

Gregory Berns
Gregory Berns is a professor of psychology at Emory University, where he directs the Center for Neuropolicy and Facility for Education & Research in Neuroscience. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller HOW DOGS LOVE US and the forthcoming THE SELF-DELUSION: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent--and Reinvent--Our Identities.

Egill Bjarnason
Author of HOW ICELAND CHANGED THE WORLD (Penguin Books), Bjarnason's work has has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Associated Press, Al Jazeera Online, AJ+, Lonely Planet and Hakai Magazine.

Andrew Blackwell
Documentary filmmaker and author of the critically-acclaimed VISIT SUNNY CHERNOBYL: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places (Rodale).

Nancy Marie Brown
Author of THE REAL VALKYRIE: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women; IVORY VIKINGS: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them; SONG OF THE VIKINGS: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths; THE ABACUS AND THE CROSS: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages; and THE FAR TRAVELER: Voyage of a Viking Woman.

Cabinet Magazine
Cabinet is a non-profit quarterly dedicated to creating a new culture of curiosity about the world and has been described by The New York Times as "voracious, omnivorous, and playful." PRESIDENTIAL DOODLES (Basic Books) grew out of a whimsical idea tossed out during an editorial meeting at the magazine.

Seth Casteel
One of the most published pet photographers in the world, Seth Casteel is author of the New York Times' best-selling UNDERWATER DOGS, UNDERWATER PUPPIES and BIG DOG, LITTLE DOG.

Marcia Chatelain
Pulitzer-Prize winning author of FRANCHISE: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright), Chatelain is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University.

Marla Cilley aka The Flylady
New York Times' best-selling author of THE CHAOS CURE and the ever-popular SINK REFLECTIONS, in which Cilley helps hundreds of thousands of her fans combat overwhelming household C.H.A.O.S. (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome). She is also the co-author (with Leanne Ely) of BODY CLUTTER.

Kate Clancy
Kate Clancy is the author of PERIOD: The Real Story of Menstruation (Princeton) and professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she holds appointments in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, and at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. She has written for National Geographic, Scientific American, and American Scientist.

Paul Collins
Paul Collins is a writer specializing in history, memoir, and unusual antiquarian literature. His nine books have been translated into eleven languages, and include THE MURDER OF THE CENTURY: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars, and BLOOD & IVY: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard. He is a 2009 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction.

Matthew F. Delmont
A distinguished professor of history at Dartmouth and author of HALF AMERICAN: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking). He has also published three other books on African American history, including MAKING ROOTS, WHY BUSING FAILED, and THE NICEST KIDS IN TOWN.

Frans de Waal
New York Times' best-selling author, one of the world's most renowned primatologists, and one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People. de Waal's books include DIFFERENT: Gender Through the Eyes of A Primatologist; MAMA'S LAST HUG: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves (winner of the 2020 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and a Best Book of 2019 according to The New York Times, Science News, Amazon and others); ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE?; THE BONOBO AND THE ATHEIST: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates; and OUR INNER APE, among others.

Thomas de Zengotita
Harper's contributor, anthropologist and social critic. Author of MEDIATED: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It (Bloomsbury).

Leanne Ely
Certified nutritionist and author of PART-TIME PALEO (Plume) and the successful SAVING DINNER series. Co-author, with Marla Cilley, of the New York Times' best-seller, BODY CLUTTER.

Larrie D. Ferreiro
Historian and author of Pulitzer Prize finalist BROTHERS AT ARMS: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It; MEASURE OF THE EARTH: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World; and CHURCHILL'S AMERICAN ARSENAL: The Partnership Behind the Innovations that Won World War Two.

Catherine Flowers
Flowers is the founder and director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and since 2008, the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative. She is the author of WASTE: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret (The New Press). Flowers was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (commonly referred to as the "Genius Grant") in 2020.

Susan Freinkel
A science writer whose work has appeared in Discover, Reader's Digest, Smithsonian, The New York Times, Health, and Real Simple, Freinkel is the author of PLASTIC: A Toxic Love Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and AMERICAN CHESTNUT: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree (University of California Press).

Avery Gilbert
Sensory psychologist and author of WHAT THE NOSE KNOWS: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life (Crown), a finalist for the LA Times' Book Prize and the Royal Society Prize.

Taras Grescoe
Award-winning journalist and social critic. Author of SHANGHAI GRAND: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue in a Doomed World; STRAPHANGER: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile; BOTTOMFEEDER: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood; and THE DEVIL'S PICNIC: Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit. Winner of Canada's Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize.

Nathan Hodge
CNN and WSJ Moscow bureau chief. A specialist in defense and national security, Hodge is the author of ARMED HUMANITARIANS: The Rise of Nation Builders and co-author (with Sharon Weinberger) of A NUCLEAR FAMILY VACATION (Bloomsbury). A longtime contributor to Wired's Danger Room, his work has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Jane's Defense Weekly and many other newspapers and magazines.

Vince Houghton
Dr. Vince Houghton is the former Historian and Curator of the International Spy Museum and is currently the Director of the National Cryptologic Museum. He is the author of NUKING THE MOON: and Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board.

Scott Huler
Author of ON THE GRID: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work (Rodale); DEFINING THE WIND: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry (Crown); and NO MAN'S LANDS, retracing the steps of Odysseus (Crown). Huler's essays are often heard on NPR.

Mira Jacob
Best-selling author of GOOD TALK: A Memoir in Conversations (One World), a finalist for the National Critics Circle Book Award; one of the top non-fiction titles of 2019 (according to the New York Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, and others); and longlisted for the 2020 PEN American Award. Jacob is also the author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling debut literary novel entitled THE SLEEPWALKER'S GUIDE TO DANCING (Random House).

Ruth Kassinger
Author of the acclaimed book SLIME: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); A GARDEN OF MARVELS: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of the Way Plants Work and PARADISE UNDER GLASS: The Education of an Indoor Gardener (William Morrow). Kassinger's science and health writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Explorer, Health magazine, Science Weekly, and other publications.

Rebecca Kauffman
Literary novelist and author of CHORUS (an IndieNext Pick and Good Housekeeping Book Club selection); THE HOUSE ON FRIPP ISLAND; THE GUNNERS (a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick); and ANOTHER PLACE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize.

Edward Kohn
Named a "Top Young Historian" by History News Network, Kohn is the author of HEIR TO THE EMPIRE CITY: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt and HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt (Basic Books).

Kelly Lambert
Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Lambert is the author of WELL GROUNDED: The Neurobiology of Rational Decisions and LIFTING DEPRESSION: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power.

Guru Madhavan
Author of WICKED PROBLEMS: How to Engineer a Better World and APPLIED MINDS: How Engineers Think (Norton), Madhavan is the Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and senior director of programs of the National Academy of Engineering where he leads and oversees activities of broad scope and complexity focused on engineering practice, education, research, communication, and policies.

Colleen McDannell
Professor of History and Sterling M. McMurring Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utah, McDannell's books include SISTER SAINTS: Mormon Women since the End of Polymory (OUP) and THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II: A History of Catholic Reform in America (Basic).

James Morgan
Author of the New York Times' Notable Book THE DISTANCE TO THE MOON and the critically acclaimed IF THESE WALLS HAD EARS: The Biography of a House as well as CHASING MATISSE: A Year in France Living My Dream.

Suzanna Mustacich
Author of THIRSTY DRAGON: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines (Henry Holt) and a contributing editor at Wine Spectator.

Shoba Narayan
Author of THE MILK LADY OF BANGALORE: An Unexpected Journey (Algonquin), a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, and MONSOON DIARY: A Memoir with Recipes.

M.R. O'Connor
Author of IGNITION: Lighting Fires in a Burning World; WAYFINDING: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World; and RESURRECTION SCIENCE: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things. O'Connor is a graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism whose reporting has appeared in Foreign Policy, Slate, Global Post, Wall Street Journal and NPR, among others. She has received support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Jennifer Paddock
One of the South's most exciting new voices in fiction, Paddock is the author of the acclaimed A SECRET WORD, which Jay McInerney called "a remarkably nuanced novel," POINT CLEAR, and the last in the trilogy, THE WEIGHT OF MEMORY.

John Palfrey
Authof of BIBLIOTECH: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (Basic), INTEROP: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems (Basic) (with Urs Gasser), among others. Palfrey's research and teaching focus on new media and learning. He has written extensively on Internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world.

Gary Andrew Poole
Journalist for Time, The Atlantic, and Esquire, Poole is the author of two sports biographies: THE GALLOPING GHOST: Red Grange, An American Football Legend (Houghton Mifflin), and PacMan: Behind the Scenes with Manny Pacquiao (Da Capo).

Andrew Potter
Author of THE AUTHENTICITY HOAX: Why the "Real" Things We Seek Don't Make Us Happy (Harper/McClelland Stewart) and co-author of the international best-seller THE REBEL SELL (called NATION OF REBELS in the United States) with Joseph Heath.

Siobhan Roberts
Science journalist and author of GENIUS AT PLAY: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway and KING OF INFINITE SPACE: Donald Coxeter, The Man Who Saved Geometry (Walker). Roberts contributes to numerous publications including The New York Times, Seed, and Smithsonian.

Michael Schuman
Asian Business Correspondent for Time Magazine. Author of SUPERPOWER INTERRUPTED: The Chinese History of China (Public Affairs); CONFUCIUS and the World He Created (Basic Books); and THE MIRACLE: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth (Harper Business).

Nina Schuyler
Literary novelist and author of THE PAINTING (Algonquin), which was named a Best Book by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Brian Shawver
Graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Shawver is the author of two novels, AFTERMATH (Nan A. Talese Books/Doubleday) and THE CUBAN PROSPECT (Overlook).

Kevin Shay
Literary novelist and author of the THE END AS I KNOW IT (Doubleday). Shay's humor writing has appeared in print and online in McSweeney's, eCompany Now, Salon, Modern Humorist, and the anthology 101 Damnations. He co-edited CREATED IN DARKNESS BY TROUBLED AMERICANS (Knopf), a collection of humor pieces from McSweeney's.

Pat Shipman
Acclaimed paleoanthropologist and science writer. Author of, among others, OUR OLDEST COMPANIONS: The Story of the First Dogs; THE INVADERS: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction; THE ANIMAL CONNECTION: A New Perspective on What Makes Us Human; and coauthor of the award-winning THE APE IN THE TREE.

Jeremy N. Smith
Journalist and author of BREAKING AND ENTERING: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien" and EPIC MEASURES: One Doctor, Seven Billion Patients and GROWING A GARDEN CITY. Smith contributes to The Atlantic, Discover, and the New York Times, among many other publications.

Amy Stewart
New York Times' best-selling author of THE TREE COLLECTORS; THE DRUNKEN BOTANIST; WICKED PLANTS; WICKED BUGS; and FLOWER CONFIDENTIAL: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers (Algonquin). Backlist includes THE EARTH MOVED and FROM THE GROUND UP. And in fiction, Stewart is the author of a historical detective series that includes GIRL WAITS WITH GUN, LADY COP MAKES TROUBLE, MISS KOPP'S MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS, among others (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Joan Strassmann
Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University and author of SLOW BIRDING: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard (Tarcher).

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
New York Times' best-selling author of THE ORIGINAL BLACK ELITE: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era (Amistad) and A SLAVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (Palgrave).

Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright
Authors of GENERATION SLEEPLESS, NOW SAY THIS, and THE HAPPY SLEEPER, Turgeon and Wright are psychotherapists, authors, sleep experts and moms that consult and educate about sleep and parenting.

Daniel H. Turtel
Author of GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK and THE FAMILY MORFAWITZ (Blackstone), winner of the Faulkner Society Award for Best Novel. Turtel's writing has appeared in the Baltimore Review and has won numerous awards.

Amanda Eyre Ward
New York Times' best-selling author of LOVERS AND LIARS; THE LIFEGUARDS; THE JETSETTERS (A Reese Book Club Pick); THE SAME SKY (A Target Bookmarked Pick); CLOSE YOUR EYES (Elle Magazine Fiction Book of the Year); HOW TO BE LOST (a Target Bookmarked Pick); SLEEP TOWARD HEAVEN; LOVE STORIES IN THIS TOWN; and FORGIVE ME, among others. Co-author of THE SOBER LUSH.

Christine E. Webb
Early Career Fellow in the Human Evolutionary Biology department at Harvard University, Webb teaches a highly sought-after course called THE ARROGANT APE, soon to be a book (forthcoming from Avery).

Sharon Weinberger
A national security journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Weinberger is the author of THE IMAGINEERS OF WAR: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World (Knopf); IMAGINARY WEAPONS: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld (Nation Books) and the co-author (with Nathan Hodge) of A NUCLEAR FAMILY VACATION: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry (Bloomsbury).

Margaret Wertheim
Science journalist and author of PHYSICS ON THE FRINGE: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything (Walker & Company), among others. Wertheim has contributed to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, TLS and many others.

Wendy Williams
New York Times' best-selling author of THE HORSE and THE LANGUAGE OF BUTTERFLIES (Simon & Schuster), among others. Williams is a journalist whose work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.

David Sloan Wilson
Renowned biologist and anthropologist. Author of THIS VIEW OF LIFE: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (Pantheon); EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (Bantam), and DARWIN'S CATHEDRAL: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Terry Lecturer at Yale.

Guy Winch, PhD
Licensed psychologist and author of EMOTIONAL FIRST AID: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries (Hudson Street Press); HOW TO FIX A BROKEN HEART (Ted Books); and THE SQUEAKY WHEEL: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships and Enhance Self-Esteem (Walker). Winch's TED Talks are rated among their most inspiring. He is co-host with Lori Gottlieb of the popular podcast, DEAR THERAPISTS.

Larry Young, PhD
Larry Young is one of the world's leading experts in the field of social behavioral neuroscience and the author of THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN US: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction, co-written with Brian Alexander (Current/Penguin).

RJ Young
RJ Young is the author of the acclaimed REQUIEM FOR THE MASSACRE and LET IT BANG: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns.

Muhammad H. Zaman, PhD
Muhammad H. Zaman, PhD, is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University. He is the author of BIOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE and BITTER PILLS. His work has been published in Nature, Science, and Lancet. Scientific American named a technology from Zaman lab among 10 technologies that will change the world.