Upcoming Webinars
Bonnie Garmus, Author of Lessons in Chemistry
April 29, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. (CT)
A global bestseller, Bonnie Garmus’ novel, Lessons in Chemistry, features an unforgettable protagonist defying 1950s norms. Expect conversation on feminism, science, and subverting expectations.
Bonnie Garmus is the author of the bestselling debut novel Lessons in Chemistry, a global hit translated into over 40 languages and adapted into an Apple TV+ series starring Brie Larson. The novel earned widespread acclaim for its wit and originality, and won numerous honors including Waterstones Author of the Year and the British Book Awards Author of the Year. Before becoming a novelist, Garmus worked as a copywriter and creative director. Originally from Seattle, she now lives in the UK and is also an avid open-water swimmer and rower.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Ruta Sepetys, Author of Salt to the Sea
May 13, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. (CT)
Closing the series is acclaimed historical fiction author Ruta Sepetys. Her session will illuminate the research process and human stories behind the hidden history included in Salt to the Sea and The Bletchley Riddle.
Ruta Sepetys is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction, known for giving voice to overlooked moments in history. Her novels, published in over sixty countries and forty languages, are widely read by both teens and adults and have earned more than forty literary awards, including the Carnegie Medal. A passionate advocate for the power of story to foster global dialogue, Sepetys has spoken at NATO, the European Parliament, and the US Capitol, and was awarded the prestigious Bellagio Fellowship for her work on human resilience. She lives with her family in Tennessee.
On-Demand Webinars
TJ Klune, Author of Under the Whispering Door
TJ Klune is a #1 New York Times bestselling queer author known for beloved novels such as Under the Whispering Door, The House in the Cerulean Sea, In the Lives of Puppets, the Green Creek series for adults, and the Extraordinaries series for teens. His work—praised for its warmth, found-family themes, and positive queer representation—has garnered major honors including the Lambda Award, the Alex Award and Mythopoeic Scholarship Award, and a Gold Nautilus Book Award. Widely acclaimed by critics, his stories are celebrated as “heart‑swelling,” “tender,” and “wrapped up in a big gay blanket.”
Purchase TJ’s text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Samira Ahmed, Author of Internment
Samira Ahmed is the bestselling author of Internment, Love, Hate & Other Filters, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, Hollow Fires, the Amira & Hamza middle-grade duology, and a Ms. Marvel comic book mini-series. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and in anthologies including Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Vampires Never Get Old, and A Universe of Wishes. Born in Bombay and raised in Batavia, IL, she holds a degree from the University of Chicago and has worked as a high school English teacher, in education nonprofits, and on political campaigns.
Purchase Samira’s text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
James Ijames, Author of Fat Ham
James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize–winning and Tony-nominated playwright, director, and educator based in South Philadelphia. His plays have been produced by theaters across the country, including The Public Theater, Steppenwolf, Wilma Theater, and National Black Theatre, and developed by institutions such as PlayPenn, The Lark, and Playwrights Horizons. His acclaimed play Fat Ham earned him the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a 2023 Tony nomination for Best Play. Ijames holds a BA from Morehouse College and an MFA from Temple University, and he is currently an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University.
Purchase James’ text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Gabrielle Zevin, Author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin is the author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which spent over a year on the New York Times Best Seller List and was named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty-five outlets, including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Time, The New York Times, Slate, The Hollywood Reporter, and Oprah Daily. In 2024, it was also included on the New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Zevin has written several other critically acclaimed and bestselling novels, including The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Young Jane Young, The Hole We’re In, and Elsewhere. Her work has been translated into over forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
Purchase Gabrielle’s text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Angie Cruz, Author of How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor whose most recent book, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and appeared on The New York Times 100 Notable Books and The Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Fiction. Her previous novel, Dominicana, was the inaugural pick for the GMA Book Club, a finalist for the Women’s Prize, and winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award. Cruz is also the author of Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee, and has received numerous honors, including the 2025 USA Fellowship, the Poets & Writers/Writers for Writers Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.
Purchase Angie’s text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Marguerite Sheffer, Author of The Man in the Banana Trees
Marguerite Sheffer is a New Orleans–based writer and Professor of Practice at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change. Her debut short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, won the 2024 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize. A former high school English teacher in Oakland, Maggie is a founding member of several writing collectives, including Third Lantern Lit and the Brackish Artist Collective. She holds an MFA from Randolph College and has received honors from The Adroit Journal, Glimmer Train, and the Chautauqua Janus Prize.
Purchase Maggie’s text at Bookshop.org.
Check out the Book Club Kit that accompanies this webinar.
Jessica Lander, Author of Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education
Jessica Lander is a teacher, author, and advocate who teaches history and civics to recent immigrant students in a Massachusetts public high school. A 2021 Global Teacher Prize Top 50 Finalist and the 2023 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, she has taught in the US, Thailand, and Cambodia. She is the author of Making Americans (Beacon Press, 2022), a deep look at immigrant education, and co-author of Powerful Partnerships (Scholastic, 2017). Her work on education has appeared in The Boston Globe, Education Week, and The Washington Post. Jessica also consults on state and national education policy and co-founded the We Are America Project, supporting over 1,500 students in telling their stories of American identity.
Purchase Jessica’s texts at Bookshop.org.
Bradley Sides, Author of Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood
Bradley Sides is the author of two short story collections, Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. His fiction appears at BULL, Ghost Parachute, Necessary Fiction, Psychopomp, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. His stories have been nominated for Year’s Best Weird Fiction and featured on LeVar Burton Reads. Additionally, he has written reviews, interviews, and essays for Chapter 16, Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Southern Review of Books. In 2019, he was selected to participate in Lit Hub’s “Secrets of the Book Critics.”
Purchase Bradley’s texts at Bookshop.org.
Paullett Golden, Award winning author of A Dash of Romance
Paullett Golden writes Historical Romances that give voice to the outliers and survivors, the wallflowers and overshadowed. With her sensual portrayal of love and historical authenticity, she promises enchanting immersion in Georgian England, from mores to moorlands. She holds a PhD, MA, and BA with specializations including Georgian and Victorian era British Lit, Arthurian Legends, Rhetoric, and Creative & Professional Writing. After establishing her career as a University Professor and seasoned speaker—keynotes, conferences, workshops, commencements, and more—she learned from an oncologist she had only three months to live. And so, she did. She aimed to survive by writing her first novel, a novel she claims saved her life. While she wrote to live, she now lives to write.
Purchase Paullett’s texts at Bookshop.org.
Aneesa Marufu, Winner of the Kimberley Chambers Kickstart Prize for Underrepresented Writers
Aneesa Marufu lives in Manchester, UK, and was the winner of the Kimberley Chambers Kickstart Prize for underrepresented writers in 2019. The Balloon Thief and An Emerald Sky are a fantasy duology inspired by her South Asian heritage and her obsession with hot air balloons, though she is yet to fly in one! When she isn’t dreaming up stories set in the clouds, she has both feet on the ground, running after her two children or hunting for her next fantasy book to escape into.
Jesmyn Ward, National Book Award Winner
Jesmyn Ward has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award.
E. P. Tuazon, Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction
E. P. Tuazon is a Filipino American writer from Los Angeles. They have work included in several publications such as The Rumpus, Lunch Ticket, Peatsmoke, and Five South. His work was chosen by ZZ Packer as the winner of the 2022 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. They are currently a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club at The Open Book, Canyon Country. In their spare time, they like to go to Filipino seafood markets to gossip with the crabs.
Ada Limón, US Poet Laureate and Author of The Hurting Kind
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and a TIME magazine woman of the year. As the Poet Laureate, her signature project is called You Are Here and focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world.
Kayte Nunn, Author of The Botanist’s Daughter
Kayte Nunn is a former book and magazine editor, and the author of six previous novels, including the international bestselling The Botanist’s Daughter, The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant, The Silk House and The Last Reunion. The Botanist’s Daughter was the 2020 winner of the Winston Graham Historical Fiction Prize. Kayte lives in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales.
On-demand video resources
Megan Soukup, Prepare for the National Day on Writing
The National Day on Writing, sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), takes place on October 20 each year and is a wonderful opportunity for NEHS Chapter Advisors and student members to share their knowledge about writing, organize events in their schools and communities, and transform the public’s understanding of writing and the important role it plays in society today.
Megan Soukup, NEHS Chapter Advisor for the Artemisa Bowden Chapter at TMI Episcopal School in San Antonio, TX, has created a video guide to planning activities and events for National Day on Writing that will inspire and support you as you plan your own celebration!
