This year’s Southwest Word Fiesta novelist panel features nationally celebrated authors Mary Glickman, Jennifer E. Smith, Rocce Hill, and Elizabeth Millane. The session will be held Friday, October 27, 3:30-4:30 PM at the Besse Forward Global Resource Center in classroom A next to the main auditorium. The panelists, joining the Fiesta via Zoom, will share their broad range of life experiences and literary explorations. A Q & A session will follow.

Mary Glickman Pat Conroy, NYT bestselling author of Prince of Tides, writes of her: "Mary Glickman is a wonder.” Born on the South Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, Mary Glickman studied at the Université de Lyon and Boston University. She is the author of Home in the Morning; One More River, a National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Fiction; Marching to Zion; An Undisturbed Peace; and By the Rivers of Babylon. Glickman lives on Seabrook Island, South Carolina, with her husband, Stephen.

By the Rivers of Babylon:

On a sultry South Carolina island, sunlight teases out the darkest secrets of the heart, in this novel.

Joe and Abigail Becker, a Jewish couple from Boston, have inherited a house on Sweetgrass Island in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Though they feel like fish out of water, the couple is excited to give the South a try—and maybe even find it a place to finally call home.

Their Boston friends are convinced they won't last the summer. But the South works its magic on the Beckers, holding them fast to misty marsh, farmlands, and grand oaks, the sweet twang of banjos and the blues. Even the locals have put aside their usual mistrust of transplants. Joe is convinced that has more to do with Abigail's beauty than with his dubious charms—especially in the case of Billy Euston. A celebrated pit master and womanizer, Billy is transfixed with Abigail at first sight. And though Joe is used to his lovely wife's effect on men, he misjudges their playful flirtations—a tragic mistake that will tear through the island like a hurricane, leaving the broken and the battered in its wake.

Jennifer E SmithJennifer E. Smith is the author of nine books for young adults, including The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, both of which have recently been adapted for film. She earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and her work has been translated into thirty-three languages. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

The Statistic Probability of Love at First Sight

Now a NETFLIX feature film, in The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, timing is everything in this romantic novel about family connections, second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver find that true love can be found in unexpected places.

Today should be one of the worst days of Hadley Sullivan's life. Having just missed her flight, she's stuck at the airport and late to her father's wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley's never even met. Then she happens upon the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he's British, and he's sitting in her row....

A long night on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate intervene to bring them together once more?

Also via Zoom is Roccie Hill:

Rocce HillRoccie Hill received her BA in Philosophy and History at UCLA, and her MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where her short stories appeared regularly in the literary quarterly. After graduate school, she moved to Salinas, where she worked with César Chavez as part of the United Farm Workers union. After living in Paris and London for years, she has returned to California, where she published two novels, several short stories, a play, exhibited her photography, and studied the history and genealogy of US borderlands cultures in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.

The Blood of My Mother: A historical saga about one woman's fight for survival:

After the deaths of her white father and mixed-race mother, young Eliza is left with neither home nor family in the newly forming frontier of Texas.

Enslaved by men who treat her body as their property, she eventually escapes, marries, becomes a mother, and realizes her dream of having a small farm. But she must fight and kill to keep it—even if it does mean welcoming others who have been shunned or forgotten by society. Living and laboring together, will these outcasts find the strength and community they need to survive and flourish?

Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction, describes it as: “Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing. I simply could not put this novel down…”

The final Zoom panelist will be Elizabeth Millane:

Elizabeth MillaneElizabeth Millane grew up along the shores of Lake Michigan where her love for books and stories developed. She was educated at Boston College, earning a Bachelor’s of in English literature, and at the University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England, where she completed a Junior Year Abroad program. It was during that year that she traveled extensively on the continent, visiting her Dutch relatives several times and learning their tales of heroism and sacrifice which formed the basis for Sixty Blades of Grass. She resides in Needham Massachusetts, travels to her two children and grandchild in Chicago and Hawaii as often as she can. She is currently at work on two novels.

Sixty Blades of Grass:

During the Second World War, Rika, a seventeen-year-old Dutch Resistance fighter, paints in fields overlooking the busy rail yards. Hidden in her artwork is information crucial to the Dutch Underground about the concentration camps and Jewish prisoner transports.

But Rika’s covert activities aren’t the only thing on her mind. In these uncertain times, even trusting family is risky. She suspects her father of collaborating with the Germans and is determined to uncover the truth.

Across town, her German-born father is also living a double life. But his desire to keep his daughter safe proves inadequate when he invites a German colonel into his home with terrible consequences . . .
With no one to rely on or turn to, Rika knows her greatest challenge has only just begun as she must fight for her own survival . . .

Inspired by the author’s own family history, this is a riveting, heartrending novel of danger and betrayal that explores what it takes to lay down one’s life for another in the most harrowing of circumstances.

“Darkly lyrical… An action filled plot.” —Mary Glickman, author of By the Rivers of Babylon