Local Authors

Karen J. Keim has been writing stories since she was 13 years old, following her father’s spare-time nightly and weekend compulsion. She attended UCSB in California and UH at Manoa in Hawaii and received her teaching credential. She spent many happy years in second and third-grade classrooms. Her fiction book, The Bison, released in May.

Barchelle (“Chelly”) Bolger Wathen has always loved dogs, her own as well as shelter dogs. Her world changed forever when Chelly and her husband adopted a very special dog, Shayla, from Ukraine. This remarkable shepherd/wolfdog, abandoned as a puppy, learned to love and trust those who raised her at the Christian orphanage Otchiy Dim (Father’s House), before she came to America.

Author of: Pain, Power & Promise: 19 Ways to Turn Setbacks into Comebacks Nannette Oatley Johnson is a wife, mother, nana, author, speaker, resiliency coach, and the 2001 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Singles and Doubles champion. For nearly 40 years, Nannette’s...

Growing up, Jessica Lynn MacLean rode dirt bikes around the Bradshaws where her relatives once built cabins. Now she writes and watches wildlife from a small Prescott deck with her husband and rescue dog. Jessica expanded on letters and articles to create her first book, Arizona Rain: Adventures in Life, Love, and Loss that Span Generations (1922-1974), which features 101 photographs.

Acclaimed author Michaela Carter moved to Prescott nineteen years ago, drawn to the stranger side of our town. She was attracted to the thriving community of artists who were embracing the woods and the creeks in their work. Drum circles, fire dancers, stilt walkers, and the summer solstice festival Tsunami On the Square, as well as the javelinas trotting down the street and the coyotes howling into the starry nights, fed her creative spirit.

Before Sherry Rossman found the awesomeness of writing in the YA realm she dabbled in children’s stories. Her first YA novel became an Amazon bestseller shortly before her publisher closed its doors. But she forged on, exploring fantastical ideas and discovering that our world is more magical than we give it credit for. In her experience working with young adults and, more recently, the elderly, she has learned that our individual lives are beautiful stories forged from adversity and perseverance.

Mercedes Ogden spends her days on her family’s hobby farm, raising her free-spirited daughter and writing all things creepy and kooky. She enjoys researching her family history and letting her imagination weave wild tales with what he uncovers. She believes that her bet fictional tales are made through real-life experiences. Her debut novel, The Gathering of the Clouds, was a labor of love consisting of many years of research and work.

Lynn Kaylor jokes that she wrote her first romance in junior high. It was a short, sweet historical story of two twelve-year-olds—the boy Native American and the girl a white settler.

Then real life took over, and she had a long career as a software developer for companies such as IBM, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Beech Aircraft.

From the cornfields of Minnesota to the hiking trails of Prescott by way of Silicon Valley, this mild-mannered, high-tech-CEO-by-day morphs into a classic rock singer by night with raspy tones reminiscent of Janis Joplin. Author…well, that was an accident.

Hilary Dartt loves great adventures, whether she’s writing, reading, or living them. The author of nine women’s fiction novels, Hilary lives in Arizona’s high desert with her husband, their three children, her Weimaraner and running partner, Leia, a failed barn cat, and a flock of chickens. She loves camping, exploring in the Jeep, and dance parties with her kids.

Sandy Nelson has authored five mystery novels under the pen name S. Resler Nelson. She grew up in Redding, California, and wrote short stories and a novella in high school. She attended San Francisco State University and continued creating short stories and award-winning poetry while pursuing her career as a high school English and art teacher in Southern Oregon.

Linda King is a storyteller, author, poet, and visual artist who has published books for a variety of readers from kids to adults. Linda is best known for her children’s book I’ve Never Seen a Bird Eat a Lemon and her adult book series, That Fluffy Bitch, as well as her art showings at local hot-spots in Arizona.

Laura Roberts was born in Oakland California and grew up in the Bay Area where she expressed herself through dance, writing, and loving each new adventure. Her years of experience working with elementary school children was her seed for Little L’s Butterflies. 

Raised on a cotton, alfalfa, and dairy farm in the small San Joaquin Valley town of Kerman, California, climbing trees and catching frogs in the irrigation ditch was a normal part of Diane Iverson’s childhood. They also were a solid foundation for her lifelong curiosity about nature, a dominant theme in her work.

A Prescott resident for thirty-one years, Amy Lukavics has always been intrigued by scary stories that explore the darker side of humanity. A lifelong bookworm who discovered Stephen King on her mother’s bookshelf, she landed her first book deal with a major publishing house at age twenty-six and has since published four young adult horror novels, multiple short stories, and five children’s chapter books under the pen name Scarlet Varlow. She is internationally published in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Iran.