Please Note: Registration for Saturday event closes Midnight, Friday, 9/19/25
Rhys Bowen, Panel moderator – Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing
Rhys Bowen’s work has sold close to 10 million copies, in over 30 languages. She has been nominated for every major mystery award and has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. A complete list can be found here.
Her books include the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy historical mysteries, as well as several international bestselling stand-alone novels.
View Rhys’s books in order here. Rhys has a loyal fanbase from around the world, including a social media following of over 215k.
Allison Brennan, Workshop – Is it Thriller, Mystery, or Suspense?
New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan believes life is too short to be bored, so she had five kids and writes three books a year. While she is best known for the Quinn & Costa FBI thrillers and the Lucy Kincaid series, she recently launched the Phoenix-set Angelhart Investigations mystery series and on occasion writes a stand-alone novel—including the romantic mystery, Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds, that came out this summer. Originally from Northern California, Allison lives in Arizona with her husband and assorted pets.
Website: https://www.allisonbrennan.com/
Christina Estes – Host, Facilitator
Christina Estes is an award-winning reporter who spent more than twenty years covering crime, public policy, and business for TV and radio stations in Phoenix, Arizona. Her reporting has appeared on CBS and NPR. Christina’s career inspired her mystery series featuring a local reporter, which began with Off the Air, winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize and a Good Morning America Buzz Pick. The sequel, THE STORY THAT WOULDN’T DIE, will be published August 19, 2025.
Website: https://www.christinaestes.com/
Robyn Gigl, Panelist – Doing Justice to Characters Unlike Yourself
Robyn Gigl (pronounced Guy-gull) is an author, attorney and advocate. Robyn’s second novel, Survivor’s Guilt, was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best mystery and thriller books of All Time. Her first novel, By Way Of Sorrow, was called “quietly groundbreaking” by the NY Times and named one of the best crime novels of 2021 by CrimeReads. In addition to being selected by TIME, Survivor’s Guilt was named as one of the best crime novels of 2022 by the NY Times, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and won the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing. Robyn’s third novel, Remain Silent, was published in May 2023 and was also nominated for the Joseph Hansen Award. Her most recent novel, Nothing But The Truth, was published in June 2024 and was an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense and selected by the NY Times as one of the best crime novels of 2024 calling Erin McCabe “one of the best series characters around.”
In addition to being an author, Robyn is an attorney and advocate who has been honored by the NJ Women Lawyers Association, the ACLU-NJ and the NJ Pride Network for her work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. She is a partner at the law firm of Dilworth Paxson, LLP in Freehold, NJ, where she handles complex commercial and employment litigation. Robyn has been selected by New Jersey Super Lawyers as one of the Top 50 Women Lawyers and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in New Jersey. She is admitted to practice before the state and federal courts of New Jersey, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She has tried cases in both state and federal courts and was one of the defense attorneys in a 21-month federal trial—the longest criminal trial in the state’s history—in which all the defendants were acquitted.
Website: https://robyngigl.com/
Wendy H. Jones, Presentation – Self-edit Your Way to Being a Better Writer
Wendy H. Jones is the multi-award-winning, international best-selling Scottish author of The DI Shona McKenzie Mysteries, Cass Claymore Investigates Mysteries, Fergus and Flora Mysteries, Bertie the Buffalo Picture books, and Writing Matters series of non-fiction books for writers. She is also owns Scott and Lawson Publishing where she publishing two mystery series—A Right Cozy Crime anthologies and Cozy Crime anthologies—and Writers’ Narrative Magazine of which Wendy is the Editor in Chief. In addition she is an international public speaker, runs writing workshops worldwide, hosts the Writing and Marketing Show podcast and is a partner in Auscot Publishing and retreats. Wendy is on the Board of Sisters in Crime and runs their TikTok channel. She is also a past President of the Scottish Association of Writers.
Website: https://www.wendyhjones.com/
Deborah J Ledford, Moderator – Doing Justice to Characters Unlike Yourself
Deborah J Ledford is the award-winning author of the Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran suspense thriller series, including Redemption and Havoc. She is also president of the media company IOF Productions Ltd and producer of Causing Chaos and Crescendo, both Anthony Award Nominees for Best Audiobook. A member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime (SinC), Deborah is also a past-president of the SinC Desert Sleuths Chapter.
Edith Maxwell (also writes as Maddie Day), Panelist — Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing
Maddie Day writes the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, the Cece Barton Mysteries, and the historical Dot and Amelia Mysteries. As Edith Maxwell, she writes the Agatha-Award winning historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at her website and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.
Catriona McPherson, Panelist – Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing
Catriona (she/her) was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the DANDY GILVER historical detective stories, the LAST DITCH mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.
Website: http://www.catrionamcpherson.com/
Karen Odden, Presentation — Grand Openings: The All-Important First Page
USA Today bestselling author Karen Odden received her PhD from NYU in 2001, writing her dissertation on Victorian literature, and she has remained in that world for her fiction, setting all her books in 1870s London. Her fourth, Down a Dark River, was an Oprah Daily pick; the sequel, Under a Veiled Moon, was nominated for the Agatha, Lefty, and Anthony awards for best historical mystery in 2023. Her short stories appear in numerous anthologies including the forthcoming BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR 2025, ed. Otto Penzler & John Grisham.
Her next book, AN ARTFUL DODGE, forthcoming from Soho Crime (August 2026), about an all-women thieving gang, was pitched as Oceans 8 meets Victorian London. The recipient of both an Arizona Commission on the Arts grant and the Spirit of Literacy Award, and a former writer-in-residence at the Glendale Library, Karen has offered writing workshops nationally since 2019. She serves as Publicity Liaison on the SinC National Board and divides her time between Arizona and Utah, where she loves to hike while plotting murder.
Website: https://karenodden.com/
Raquel V. Reyes, Presentation – Investing in Your Career: A Pep talk about Planning, Professionalism, and Patience
Raquel V. Reyes writes Latina protagonists. Her Cuban-American heritage, Miami, and Spanglish feature prominently in her work. Mango, Mambo, and Murder, the first in the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series, won a LEFTY for Best Humorous Mystery. It is being developed for screen as Miami Spice. Her work has been nominated for Agatha and Anthony Awards. She has won an International Latino Book Award Gold Medal. Raquel’s short stories appear in various anthologies, including The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. She currently serves as Vice President of Sisters in Crime.
Find her across social media platforms as @LatinaSleuths and on her website LatinaSleuths.com
Website: https://rvreyes.com
D.M. Rowell, Panelist – Doing Justice to Characters Unlike Yourself
D. M. Rowell (Koyh Mi O Boy Dah), an enrolled citizen of the Kiowa Tribe, comes from a long line of storytellers within a Plains Indian culture that treasures oral traditions. After a thirty-two-year career spinning stories for Silicon Valley corporations and start-ups with a few escapes creating award-winning documentaries, Rowell started a new chapter writing the Mud Sawpole mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional Kiowa woman solving thefts and murders in Kiowa country. The first, Never Name The Dead was a 2023 Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award Finalist. Publishers Weekly said of Silent Are The Dead, “Rowell’s clever second whodunit … elegantly threads tangible details about tribal life into the action, which remains propulsive throughout.”
Third in the series, EYES OF THE DEAD is seeking a publisher while Rowell is wrapping up the fourth book in the Mud Sawpole Mystery series, BONES OF THE DEAD.
Website: https://www.dmrowell.com/
Alex Segura, Panelist – Doing Justice to Characters Unlike Yourself
Alex Segura is the bestselling and award-winning author of Secret Identity, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and an NPR Best Mystery of the Year. He’s also the author of the acclaimed Pete Fernandez series, as well as the Star Wars novel, Poe Dameron: Free Fall, and the YA Spider-Verse adventure, Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow. In 2024, he published a sci-fi/espionage novel, Dark Space, co-written with Rob Hart; the graphic novel The Legendary Lynx, illustrated by Sandy Jarrell; Encanto: Nightmares and Sueños; and Alter Ego, a standalone sequel to Secret Identity. Alter Ego was an instant USA Today bestseller, featured in Cosmpolitan, Parade, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and described as “thrilling” by the Wall Street Journal. In addition to his prose writing he has written a number of comics for Marvel and DC, including Star Wars: Battle of Jakku, Spider-Society, and The Question: All Along the Watchtower. With Michael Moreci he is the writer behind the noir re-launch of Dick Tracy. He lives in New York City with his family.
Website: https://www.alexsegura.com/
Lois Winston, Panelist — Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous fish-out-of-water novel about a small-town girl going off to the big city and the mother who had other ideas. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception.
Then Lois’s writing segued unexpectedly into the world of humorous amateur sleuth mysteries, thanks to a conversation her agent had with an editor looking for craft-themed mysteries. In her day job Lois was an award-winning craft and needlework designer, and although she’d never written a mystery—or had even thought about writing a mystery—her agent decided she was the perfect person to pen a series for this editor. Thus, was born the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series now includes fourteen novels and three novellas. Lois also writes the Empty Nest Mysteries, currently at two novels, and one book so far in her Mom Squad Capers series.
To date Lois has published twenty-four novels, five novellas, several short stories, one children’s chapter book, and one nonfiction book on writing, inspired by her twelve years working as an associate at a literary agency. Her articles on writing also appear regularly in Killer Nashville magazine. To learn more about Lois and her books, visit her at www.loiswinston.com. Sign up for her newsletter to receive an Anastasia Pollack Mini-Mystery. She also blogs regularly at The Stiletto Gang and Booklover’s Bench.
Website: https://www.loiswinston.com/