Novel Panel
Wednesday, June 24, 4-5 PM
Moderator Trey Dowell is an award-winning author of both short and novel-length fiction. His short stories have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Abyss and Apex, MetaStellar, and Mystery Magazine, among many others, and he won the 2022 Derringer Award for Best Crime/Mystery Short Story of the year. An avid competition writer, Dowell has won the NYC Midnight's Flash Fiction, WritersWeekly.com, Bethlehem Writer's Roundtable, and Bardsy's short fiction contests. His debut science-fiction thriller, The Protectors, was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster.
Nicholas Deitch’s debut novel Death and Life in the City of Dreams is deeply influenced by his experiences in nonprofit leadership and the design of inclusive communities and urban places. He is a writer, architect, and advocate for social justice. His fiction explores the intersection of cities, history, and human resilience.
He has honed his craft, publishing short stories in Litro Magazine, Club Plum, and Santa Barbara Literary Journal. His short story “Grace Eternal” won Best Fiction at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference (2019). Originally from Los Angeles, Nick now lives in Ventura, California, with his wife and creative partner, Diana.
Frances Pettey Davis’ debut novel Red Summer is set in the summer of 1954, where the small California town of Bear River simmers with Cold War paranoia. She’s an author, journalist, essayist, fiction writer, and poet, born and raised in California's Central Valley. She has been a newspaper columnist, feature writer, and editor.
She’s a winner of the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Goleta, California and has served as a manuscript consultant at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
David Starkey’s most recent novel, The Fairley Brothers in Japan, chronicles the comeback tour of the brothers’ 1980s folk rock band. David served as Santa Barbara's 2009-2011 Poet Laureate.
He's Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College and the Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty years, he's published 11 full-length collections of poetry with small presses and more than 500 poems in literary journals. His novel Poor Ghost was released March 2024.
Max Talley's third short story collection, Destroy Me Gently, Please, was published by Serving House Books, his hippie crime novel, Peace, Love, & Haight, launched last fall, and his hardboiled thriller, Santa Fe Psychosis, was expanded and republished this spring by Lazarus Media.
He has had seventy stories or essays published since 2015. His writing has appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, About Place, Iron Horse Literary Review, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Marlo Faulkner’s debut novel, The Second Mrs. London, is historical fiction covering the relationship between Jack London and Charmain Kittredge. A professional writer for over 35 years, Marlo began her writing career as a by-lined weekly columnist for a San Francisco Bay area daily.
She writes short stories, film scripts, magazine and newspaper profiles, as well as fiction. Several times a speaker at the Jack London Society National Symposia, Marlo Faulkner is the former Director of the Jack London Writers Conference .
