ALEX DAWSON is full time faculty at Rutgers University, where he teaches creative writing (with a focus on folklore, fantasy, and horror), hosts Inside the Writers House, a video chat with acclaimed authors from all over world, and leads fable-fueled Study Abroad programs to some of the planet's most mythical places. He is the owner/creator (w. Julian Lance) of the the Rac-On-Tour, a mobile bookstore/cabinet of wonder built on the back of a flatbed farm truck, and he curates/hosts R.O.T. Fest, a bi-monthly vaudevillian variety show that puts writers onstage alongside musicians, puppeteers, and sideshow performers. His forthcoming novel, Welcome to White Hart (Little Island), has been called "magical and masterful" (Lev Grossman, The Magicians) and "a work of wizardry" (Idra Novey, Those Who Knew). Samantha Hunt (Mr. Splitfoot) called it a "wonder" and said it was "impossible not to be amazed. He is currently touring with The Devil and Daisy Dirt, an original bluegrass musical about the Jersey Devil, which features an 8' wearable puppet. Find out more about it here.
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Dawson (w. Lance). Arthur's Seat summit, Edinburgh.
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ENGLAND ONLY! AIMEE LABRIE: I teach creative writing at Rutgers and work as the senior program administrator for Writers House. My short stories have appeared in the Minnesota Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, Cimarron Review, Pleiades, Beloit Fiction Journal, Permafrost Magazine, and others. My second collection of short stories, Rage and Other Cages, won the 2022 Leapfrog Press Global Prize in Fiction and will be published in 2023. Joyce Carol Oates called it "Mordantly funny, eerily discomforting, & unexpectedly wise." In 2020, my short story “Rage” won first place in Solstice Literary Magazine’s Annual Literary Contest and my novel in progress won the Key West Literary Seminar Emerging Writer Award. In 2007, my first short story collection, Wonderful Girl, was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and published in a small print run (University of North Texas). My short fiction has been nominated four times for Pushcart Prizes. In 2012, she won first place in the Zoetrope: All-Story’s Short Fiction Competition. I have two dogs, Wyatt and Millie.
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Reading at The Mysterious Bookshop with Joyce Carol Oates.
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IRELAND ONLY! Internationally bestselling fantasy author/displaced Dublin Viking DAVE
RUDDEN began his arts career as a storyteller in Dublin at nights like
The Monday Echo and Milk & Cookies, before realising it might be a
good idea to try writing some stuff down. Regularly compared to Terry
Pratchett, he has been called a "shooting star" (Eoin Colfer, Artemis
Fowl) and "an author to watch" (Guardian) with "the eye and ear of an
artist" (Irish Times). His "shimmering... magical" (The Guardian)
trilogy, Knights of the Borrowed Dark, about a secret war between a race
of misery-eating, waistcoat-wearing monsters and the warriors sworn to
stop them, has been called "atmospheric, action packed, and powerfully
imagined" by the Sunday Times and "brilliant... numinous... archetypal
and timeless" by The LA Review of Books. He is the author of three
Christmastime Doctor Who anthologies, 12 Angels Weeping, The Wintertime
Paradox. His hotly anticipated Irish fantasy opus, Sister Wake, is
forthcoming. He teaches creative writing at UCD (University College
Dublin) and is the Artist in Residence at DCU (Dublin City University).
Find out more about him
here.
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IRELAND ONLY! JULIAN LANCE and NIKKI WEAVER are veterans of Dawson's Winter Is Here! Writing Workshop/Adventure Retreat, with Lance, a former student of Dawson's, functioning as retreat "deputy" for the past seven years. Nikki enrolled as a participant for Iceland, then Oxford/Bath, before joining the team as a much valued second "deputy." Both are Rutgers graduates, currently living in Dublin, earning their MA in Creative Writing from DCU (Dublin City University).
