Woburn Public Library is having a Local Author Book Fair!

 

Come meet authors and illustrators from Woburn and nearby!  Authors will talk about and sell their books with during our

Summer Reading Kick Off Event
Saturday, June 22 from 1-4 PM

 

Local Author Book Fair 2024 Author Gallery

 

With novelty ice cream treats donated by Nanabette’s Ice Cream and the Friends of the Woburn Public Library (while supplies last)!

nanabettes ice cream logo friends of the woburn public library logo

 

Guest Authors:

 

oh deer yes dear
Allen Banasiak

  • Oh Deer!  Yes Dear.
Francis Blessington
Francis Blessington

  • Witchcraft and Milton (finished, awaiting review)
  • Paradise Lost and the Classical Epic (Rpt.: Routledge Library Editions, 2019.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
  • Paradise Lost: Ideal and Tragic Epic (Rpt.: New York: Authors Guild, 2004.) (Boston: Twayne/G. K. Hall, 1988). Paperback title: Paradise Lost: A Student’s Companion to the Poem.
  • The Last Witch of Dogtown (Gloucester, MA: The Curious Traveller Press, 2001). (Novel)
  • The Motive for Metaphor: Essays on Modern Poetry in Honor of Samuel French Morse, edited with Guy Rotella (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983).
  • Poems from Underground: (Cumberland, ME: Deerbrook Editions, 2017).
  • Wolf Howl (University of Missouri-Kansas City: BkMk Press, 2000). (Poems)
  • Lantskip (Dublin, NH: William L. Bauhan, 1987). (Poems)
  • Euripides: Trojan Women, Helen, Hecuba: Three Plays about Women and the Trojan War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015). (Verse Translations)
  • Euripides: The Bacchae and Aristophanes: The Frogs (Rpt.: New York: Authors Guild, 2003.) (Arlington Heights, IL: Crofts Classics, 1993). (Verse Translations)
  • Lorenzo de’ Medici (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992.) (Verse Play)

 

Author accepts: cash, check

Sophia Desmornes Sophia Desmornes

Sophia Desmornes is a wife, mother of four handsome boys and currently resides in Boston, MA. She loves watching movies, eating delicious food, and serving her community.

Sophia has a passion for inspiring children to be the best version of themselves. She is devoted to loving and encouraging those around her. Sophia became an advocate for positive self-identification when faced with difficult life experiences and health challenges surrounding her own children. These events inspired her to write her first children’s book, I Know Who I Am. With so many outside influences affecting children’s self-esteem, Sophia has set out to plant seeds of self-confidence in the hearts of her readers. With her writing, she hopes to encourage children to know who they are and who God has called them to be.

In addition to writing, Sophia’s professional background is in health care. Her academic achievements include a BS in Biology, a BS in Nursing and an MHA (Master’s in Health Administration). She has worked in healthcare for over 10 years in various roles and currently works in nurse leadership.

 

buffy the three legged pit bull

Ewa Erdman

Woburn resident (and Buffy’s owner) Ewa Erdman will be selling her book for $10.  All sale proceeds are donated to animal shelters.  Cash only.  If you have time, if you have questions, if you are interested… there are endless stories to share about Buffy’s remarkable life journey.  Please note that there were three Boston Globe Sunday Magazine articles written about her.

For Children:  This 28 page, fully illustrated book, presents the life of Buffy, from being disabled, abandoned and unwanted, to a life of warmth, love, and dedicated service to others.  This true story is serious in some aspects, but Buffy is funny, spunky, and mischievous throughout.

For Adults:  All the anecdotes in the book are true, but written for children. Therefore, no details of her backstory are in the book, but adults and older children will understand the messages of discrimination, judging based on appearance, condemning based on stereotypes, and other life lessons.  This book will interest ages 4 -94.

  • Buffy the Three-Legged Pit Bull

Author accepts: cash

karin gertsch Karin M. Gertsch

Karin is a retired educator, who lives with her husband Emil on a Christmas tree farm in Essex, Massachusetts. In 1997, her book, Cape Ann & Vicinity: A Guide for Residents and Visitors, was published by Acorn Press just in time for the City of Gloucester’s 375th anniversary. It was the first guidebook for this historic area.

Fast forward to 2019, and Austin Macauley Publishers in New York produced her first children’s book, Flora Has an Adventure; it is the first book in a series. Also in 2019, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis published her short story, Dependence Day, in their 50th anniversary anthology honoring the anniversary of Slaughterhouse Five. Her short story, After World War II, was published by Hawai’i Pacific Review in 2020.

The author’s first novel, Five Wishes, was released on June 13, 2023 by Atmosphere Press in Austin, Texas.

Karin is working on several Flora children’s stories as well as an adult creative non-fiction book, Monika’s Journey. When not writing or reading, the author enjoys tending her garden and baking and cooking. Spending time outdoors with her rescue pup, Oliver, is a daily event!

 

Author accepts: cash

John Harrison

 

kim nagy

John Harrison & Kim Nagy

John Harrison, after graduating from Bentley University in 1970, went into the U. S. Navy and was stationed with the Naval Security Group at NAVCOMMSTA Sidi Yahia, Morocco for an enriching two years. Upon returning to the USA, he founded EPILOG ENTERPRISES in 1975, a book distributing business of which he has been president since. It is this business that has brought him into the orbit of the authors in this book.
Harrison has always been interested in photography but Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the wildlife opportunities there gave his love of photography direction. His photographs have been published by Mass Audubon, The Humane Society of the U. S., Project Coyote in CA, and in books, magazines, newspapers and websites. He presents wildlife power point programs at schools and for senior citizen groups, and has authored THE MEDFORD WILDLIFE WATCH blog for the Medford Transcript newspaper for many years.

 

Kim Nagy has made the natural world both her profession and her hobby. Together with John Harrison, she published Dead in Good Company: A Celebration of Mount Auburn Cemetery and the six-book True Wildlife Adventure Series for Children. Her current work is Staying Sane on the Crazy Train: Journeying to the End with My Mother. Kim is an avid wildlife photographer, traveling widely in pursuit of her craft. She lives in New England.

 

Author accepts: cash, check

sheilagh herrera

Sheilagh Herrera

Sheilagh Herrera is the author of the historical novel No Other Place on Earth. She began secretly writing fiction in middle school and never really stopped. A Woburn native, she spent time living in Washington DC, Israel, and Colombia before landing back in New England. She currently lives in Rhode Island with her family and a very cool rescue dog.

 

Author accepts: cash, Venmo (@Sheilagh-Carey)

wayne miller Wayne Miller

Wayne Miller was a Special Agent, Criminal Investigator and Certified Fire Investigator for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Boston for 25 years. He has been involved in numerous high profile illegal firearms, bombing and arson cases. As a member of the ATF National Response Team, Mr. Miller responded to several major fire and explosion incidents. During his public and private career, he examined more than 2,300 fire and explosion scenes plus provided expert testimony in numerous Federal and State courts.

Mr. Miller has been a member of the International Association of Arson Investigators since 1984 and has held numerous positions within the MA Chapter of the IAAI. Besides teaching fire investigation as an Adjunct Professor at Cape Cod Community College for 2 semesters, he has been a speaker on fire-related topics over 80 times throughout the United States and in Canada.

Burn Boston Burn, his first book, is the 2022 Global Book Gold Award Winner. His second book, BANG BOOM BURN, won the Global Book Silver Award.

en light

EN Light

Elayne M. Neal, who uses the pen name E. N. Light, is a longtime resident of Woburn and has published five books on Amazon since 2019. Her books are mostly inspirational and educational or of a self-help nature. She is in the process of writing her sixth book.

I will be bringing the following five books for display and any sales:

  1. Return of The Eagle: Poems with Their Stories of Higher Consciousness (2019)
  2. Kabir-Like Chastisements: To Get on the Return Path Material to Spiritual (2021)
  3. The Pyramid Discourses: Co-Partnering with God (2021)
  4. Creating & Changing Realities: A Dynamic Tool for Self-Mastery (2022)
  5. Spirit of Life Poetry: Views of the Dual World (2023)

 

Author accepts: cash, PayPal

maria olia

Maria Olia

Maria Olia is a travel writer and essayist. She has written extensively about Boston and New England and has authored 6 books on the region including Massachusetts Off the Beaten Path, No Access Boston and New England’s Colonial Inns & Taverns. She is currently writing Massachusetts Farms and Farmer’s Markets for spring 2026. Her articles and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe and National Geographic among many other publications. She lives with her husband in Newton and is the mother of four adult children and grandmother of one.

 

Author accepts: cash, credit cards, Pay Pal (@MariaOlia) and Venmo @Maria-Olia

John Olszewski
John Olszewski

John Olszewski was born and raised in the historic city of Salem, Massachusetts. From a young age he became fascinated with true crime. This led to a lifelong mission to learn everything he could on serial killers. Along the way John received degrees in Criminal Justice, Behavioral Science, and Counseling Psychology. He has worked in academic institutions, hospitals, jails, prisons, treatment centers, as well as appear on the lecture circuit. His debut novel, The Long Dark Walk, released in 2019, began the chronicling of his personal research on the world’s most famous killers, including mass, serial, and spree killers, as well as professional athletes incarcerated for crimes. His second novel, Serial Shorts, released in 2022, is his first collection of seven short stories based on real life serial killers. He is currently working on sequels to both books.

Author accepts: cash, Venmo

alicia restucci

Alicia Restucci

Alicia M. Restucci is a newly self-published author of the Stellara trilogy as well as a standalone YA mystery Murder in Lakeside. A native to Woburn, Alicia is no stranger to the east coast. Her passions include art, spoiling her Daschund rescue, and writing.

  • The Black Moon’s Curse
  • The Secret of the Moonstone
  • Murder in Lakeside

 

Author accepts: cash, PayPal, Venmo @Alicia-Restucci

Rob Swymer
Rob Swymer

A native of Boston, Rob married his first wife Bonnie at the age of 21 during the summer of his college junior year. Together, they had 3 children. In 1994, Rob and Bonnie moved from Boston and headed to Atlanta where they raised their children and built a great life together.

In 2013, Rob lost Bonnie to a massive brain aneurysm. He learned that all the adversity in his life prior had given him the strength to endure the loss of a loved one. In 2016, Rob was blessed to find love again and is now married to Melissa. Together they have a blended family of 5 children and four beautiful grandchildren. Rob and Melissa currently live in Ponte Vedra, Florida and enjoy spending time together with their children and grandchildren, listening to live music, traveling, sports and the beach life.

 

ann taylor

Ann Taylor

A long-time Professor of English at Salem State University in Massachusetts, Ann Taylor has written two books on college composition, academic and free-lance essays, and a collection of personal essays, Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing. Her first poetry book, The River Within, won first prize in the 2011 Cathlamet Poetry competition at Ravenna Press. A chapbook, Bound Each to Each, was published in 2013. Her collection, Héloïse and Abélard: the Exquisite Truth, published in 2018, is based on the twelfth-century story of their lives, and her most recent collection, Sortings, was published by Dos Madres Press, in June of 2020. Her recent manuscript, Taking Care, is under consideration with a publisher. She is currently at work on a collection of poems focusing on Horn Pond in Woburn, Massachusetts (Horn Pond: As I See It), near which she grew up and where she now lives again.

  • Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing
  • The River Within
  • Bound Each to Each
  • Héloïse and Abélard: the Exquisite Truth
  • Sortings

 

Author accepts: cash, check, Venmo

Holly Walters

Holly Walters

Holly Walters originally hails from a small, rural, town in Minnesota. A life-long storyteller, Holly is also a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from Brandeis University working in the high Himalayas of Nepal. While her ethnographic work focuses on fossil folklores and sacred ammonites in South Asia, her creative work pays homage to the dragons, unicorns, and fairy tales of her youth. When not writing, she can be found perfecting her Medieval archery skills, theorizing about movie plots, and forgetting where she left her tea cup. Today, she makes her home in Boston, Massachusetts, with a very unruly garden, a few equally cantankerous pets, a clever spouse, and a resident house ghost. And since her creepy sculpture hobby hasn’t panned out thus far, she is looking forward to the publication of her first novel and the writing of many more.  Follow her on X/Twitter and BlueSky @Manigarm.

 

Author accepts: cash, PayPal, Venmo

daniel zimmerman shots in the dark

Daniel Zimmerman

Over the past eighteen years, first-time author Daniel Zimmerman has written more than eight hundred columns as a stringer for GateHouse Media, a United States publisher of daily and weekly newspapers. While only a toddler during the events in 1963, Zimmerman grew up with knowledge of the shootings: the victims, Toby and Mark Wagner, were his aunt and cousin. Years ago, he was granted exclusive access to Rocco Anthony Balliro and met with with him in prison over a two-year span to hear his story and conduct in-depth interviews. Zimmerman became so close with the Balliro family that when Rocco passed away, he was asked to present a eulogy at the service.

Zimmerman lives with his wife of thirty-nine years on the North Shore of Boston, and has one daughter who added a pair of grandchildren to their family.

 

Author accepts: cash, check, Venmo @Daniel-Zimmerman-104

 


Are you a local author or illustrator interested in participating in future book fairs? Please let us know!