Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of The New York Times’ bestseller, The Warmth of Other Suns which won seven awards including the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting.  She speaks on topics such as migration, social injustice, urban affairs and 20th Century history. Wilkerson also won the George Polk Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named the Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Tim Egan is a columnist and author. His recent book, The Big Burn -- Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, was a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the 2009 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. In 2006 he won the 2006 National Book Award for nonfiction with his book The Worst Hard Time. He also shares the Pulitzer Prize, from 2001, with a team of New York Times reporters for their series, "How Race is Lived in America."  Egan worked as a national correspondent for the Times covering stories from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, to the O.J. Simpson trial, to the collapse of small town America in the Great Plains.

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of 22 books of fiction. He received a Ph.D. in 19th-Century British Literature from the University of Iowa, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, where he is a professor of English. His stories have appeared in most major American magazines including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and GQ to name only a few. He received the PEN/Faulkner for best novel of the year in 1988 with his bookWorld's End. He also received the PEN/Malamud Prize for T.C.Boyle's Stories in 1999, and the Prix Medicis Etranger for The Tortilla Curtain, best foreign novel in France.

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Jacqueline Woodson is a multi award-winning author of young adult fiction. She was raised and educated in Greenville, SC, and Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from college with a B.A. in English and worked in New York City as a drama therapist for runaway and homeless teens and children. Her stories often include characters who feel out of place and face difficulties that young children can relate to. She won a Newbery Honor in 2006 for the book Show Way. Her book Locomotion was a National Book Award finalist, and she won the Corretta Scott King Honor in 2001 and 2004.  Woodson received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Miracle's Boys, which was later made into a mini-series, and she won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults from the Young Adult Library Services Association. She lives and writes full-time in Brooklyn.

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Lisa See is often referred to as a "book club favorite" but her writing and work about her Chinese heritage go far beyond that realm. She has done extensive civic work winning her the honor of National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese American Women in 2001, and was the recipient of the Chinese American Museum's History Maker Award in 2003. Her first book, On Gold Mountain (1995) was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book. It traced the journey of her great-grandfather Fong See, who overcame obstacles to become the 100-year-old godfather of Los Angeles' Chinatown and patriarch of his sprawling family. From her international bestseller Snow Flower and the Secret Fan to her bestseller Shanghai Girls, See's novels are heavily influenced by her Chinese heritage and fascination with what she refers to as "forgotten history." She has served as guest curator for an exhibit on the Chinese-American experience for the Autry Museum of Western Heritage and the Smithsonian. She also helped to develop an interactive space for children at the Autry Museum that focuses on her biracial, bicultural family as seen through the eyes of her father as a 7-year-old child. She developed a walking tour of L.A.'s Chinatown and helped to create the inaugural exhibition for the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles.

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. Egan has received numerous literary awards including a Pulitzer Prize. In 2001 her novel, The Invisible Circus, became a feature film staring Cameron Diaz. Her book Look at Me was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction and The Keep was also listed as a national bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, and other magazines. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and her article "The Bipolar Kid" received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Her most recent novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize.