Mary Beth Keane attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA. She was awarded a John S. Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing, and has received citations from the National Book Foundation, PEN America, and the Hemingway Society. She is the author of The Walking People, Fever, and Ask Again, Yes—a New York Times bestseller and a Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Summer Reads Pick. Ask Again, Yes has been sold in twenty-two languages. She lives in New York with her family.

Karen Dukess is the author of THE LAST BOOK PARTY (Henry Holt, 2019), an IndieNext and Barnes & Noble Discover pick. Karen spent nearly a decade as a speechwriter for the United Nations. She has a degree in Russian Studies from Brown University and a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University. She lives outside of New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today’s most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks.