Wake Forest Lit Fest announces lineup for 2024

The Wake Forest Lit Fest announced its 2024 lineup, which features many bestselling, prize-winning and local authors.

The Wake Forest Lit Fest will be at Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, NC on October 12th. Tickets can be purchased here, and all proceeds support New Kids On the Books, a non-profit that donates books to children who cannot afford them or do not have reliable access to them.

Authors include:

Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud is the author of The Strange, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, and North American Lake Monsters. He’s twice won the Shirley Jackson Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Locus Awards. His stories have been adapted into the Hulu limited series Monsterland and the film Wounds.
Crypt of the Moon Spider is Ballingrud's first novella, and his next step towards horror stardom.

Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash is the New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home, the acclaimed This Dark Road to Mercy, The Last Ballad and most recently When Ghosts Come Home. He is a three-time winner of the SIBA Southern Book Prize, won the Conroy Legacy Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Diane Chamberlain

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Diane Chamberlain is the author of twenty-eight novels published in over fifteen languages. Her books include The Last House on the Street, Big Lies in a Small Town, The Stolen Marriage and The Dream Daughter.

Therese Anne Fowler

Therese Anne Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of It All Comes Down to This, A Good Neighborhood, A Well-Behaved Woman, and Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.

John Kessel

John Kessel is the author of the novels Pride and Prometheus, The Moon and the Other, Good News from Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, Freedom Beach. His latest novel, The Presidential Papers, releases this October.
Kessel's stories have twice received the Nebula Award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in addition to the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Locus Poll, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award.

Sharon Kurtzman

Sharon Kurtzman is the author of The Lost Baker of Vienna, coming in 2025 from Pamela Dorman Books. As a freelance food-writer her work has appeared in INDY Week and South Writ Large. Sharon is also a former blogger for The Huffington Post and a past contributor at BetterAfter50.com. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies and she’s had two pieces nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Mesha Maren

Mesha Maren is the author of the novels Sugar Run, Perpetual West and Shae. Her short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, a 2014 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Appalachian Writing Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation.

Kwame Mbalia

Kwame Mbalia is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and the publisher of Freedom Fire, an imprint of Disney Hyperion devoted to stories about the Black diaspora by Black creators. His newest middle grade novel, Jax Freedom and the Phantom Shriek, releases Oct. 1st. His debut middle-grade novel, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it was followed by Tristan Strong Destroys the World and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching.

Jill McCorkle

Jill McCorkle has the distinction of having published her first two novels on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said: "one suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist. With July 7th, she is also a full grown one." Since then she has published five other novels—most recently, Hieroglyphics—and four collections of short stories, the most recent of which is Old Crimes. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories. McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Thomas Wolfe Prize; she was recently inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame.

Vanessa Miller

Vanessa Miller is a bestselling author, with several books appearing on ESSENCE Magazine's Bestseller List. She has also been a Black Expressions Book Club alternate pick and #1 on BCNN/BCBC Bestseller List. Most of Vanessa's published novels depict characters who are lost and in need of redemption. Her novel, The American Queen, released in January.

Scott Reintgen

Scott Reintgen is the New York Times bestselling author of the Waxways series, the Nyxia trilogy, the Dragonships series, and the Celia Cleary series for younger readers. His newest novel The Last Dragon on Mars releases Oct. 1st.

Maggie Rudd

Maggie Rudd is the author of I'll Hold Your Hand, illustrated by Elisa Chavarri; as well as How To Stay Invisible, and I'll Hold Your Hand and On the Fourth of July. Her book The Days After Christmas will be out this September.