Always Authors

Mia P. Manansala is a 2021 debut author of the acclaimed Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, Arsenic and Adobo and most recently, Homicide and Halo-Halo.  She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship. 
Lyn Liao Butler has lived several lives as a concert pianist, ballerina and now, as a yoga instructor, mother, wife and acclaimed 2021 debut author of The Tiger Mom's Tale and most recently, Red Thread of Fate.  
Mia and Lyn’s discussion offers a frank look into the world of debut writers, where they learn to ward off impostor syndrome, practice self-care to improve their craft, plot new ways to embed their passion for traditional Asian food into their books…and mostly avoid writing steamy sex scenes in their novels.

Kelly Sue DeConnick is a trailblazing comic book writer. She is credited with creating the new and improved version of the Captain Marvel heroine Carol Danvers that influenced the story foundation for the 2019 Captain Marvel movie. In response to criticism about her feminism, she created the series Bitch Planet, which has inspired a whole generation of female comic book readers. She moved from Marvel to DC comics where she reimagined the Aquaman series and, most recently, she completed DC’s Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.
Adrienne Mayor, is a pre-eminent folklorist and research scholar in the history of science and classics at Stanford University. She has written more than a half-dozen award winning books, including the seminal works The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World and Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Her latest title, Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws, and Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities, was released in early 2022.
Though a generation apart, these two accomplished women begin their discussion with a mutual-admiration love-fest, and then dive into a spirited dialogue that includes super heroes, the myth of a female utopia, grieving like the Greeks and the consequences of having sex at Aphrodite's shrine.

André Aciman is the NY Times best-selling author of nine titles including Call Me By Your Name, which was made into an Oscar winning film, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, and his latest collection of essays, Homo Irrealis.
Edmund de Waal, CBE,  is a contemporary English artist, master potter and NY times best-selling author. His most notable titles are The Hare with Amber Eyes (awarded the Costa Book Award for Biography, Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction); The White Road, and most recently, Letters to Camondo.
André and Edmund engage in a passionate discussion about their lives, creative process and the challenges of capturing their family histories for readers. They cover it all, from Penthouse to Proust.