Keynote Speaker: 

Fonda Lee spent a decade as a corporate strategist for Fortune 500 companies prior to becoming a science fiction and fantasy author. Her sci-fi novel Zeroboxer (Flux/Llwellyn) came out in 2015; she was named the Willamette Writers Up and Coming Award winner that year. Fonda’s second novel releases from Scholastic in early 2017. 

Mary Bisbee-Beek began a publishing career in 1979 in San Francisco, California.

She has been the owner and Director of Beeksbee Books, an independent publicity and marketing consulting office, 1992-2003 in St. Paul, MN.

 In 2003 she was invited to work at the University of Michigan Press, where she was the Director of Publicity and the Trade Marketing and Foreign Rights Manager.  In 2008, she joined Literary Ventures Fund, where she worked as a marketing, publicity and foreign rights consultant.

During the summer of 2010, Mary relocated to Portland, OR and once again opened her own office where she takes on independent projects with publishers and authors located around the world.

Kari Luna, teen novelist and whimsicologist, is the author of The Theory of Everything, a Fall 2013 New Voices Pick and winner of the 2014 Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. She’s also the founder and creative director of www.forthecuriousones.com, an Idea Lab featuring branding, digital and film work. Her newest venture, Launch w/Love, helps KidLit authors brand and promote themselves and their books with heart. Kari lives in Portland, Oregon where she’s currently at work on several young adult novels and a middle grade series, all involving science, music, and magic, of course. Visit her at www.kariluna.com.

Jessica Page Morrell understands both sides of the editorial desk as a developmental editor and author. She writes with depth, wit and clarity on topics related to writing and creativity along with other topics and is the author of Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us, A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected; Bullies, Bastards & Bitches, How to Write the Bad Guys in Fiction; The Writer’s I Ching: Wisdom for the Creative Life; Voices from the Street; Between the Lines: Master The Subtle Elements Of Fiction Writing; and Writing Out the Storm. Her work also appears in anthologies and The Writer and Writer’s Digest magazines. Morrell founded and coordinates three writing conferences. She works as a developmental editor, has been a columnist since 1998, and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences throughout North America.

Adam O’Connor Rodriguez is an editor, writer, and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. He works as Senior Editor of Hawthorne Books and is a professor in the Master’s of Publishing program at Portland State University. His fiction, poetry, and interviews appear widely. A graduate of Eastern Washington University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, he has also served in editorial leadership roles for various literary journals.