What’s Your Muse? Writers in Conversation

The muse: whether it be a quick hot spark, a lifelong endless quest, mere curiosity, or obsession, will be the impetus for a conversation among five local powerhouse authors.

Sit in on this enlightening, thought-provoking, and amusing group of accomplished authors on

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Wonder Garden, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the New England Book Award; The Paper Wasp, longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize; and The Hundred Waters, named a Best Book of 2022 by Vogue. She was a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in Paris Review, Guernica, The New York Times Book Review, and LitHub, among other places. She lives in Katonah with her husband and daughter.

Carolyn Ferrell‘s short story collection, Don’t Erase Me, won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her debut novel, Dear Miss Metropolitan, was shortlisted for the PEN Hemingway and the PEN Faulkner Awards. A recipient of grants from the Fulbright Association and the National Endowment for the Arts, Ferrell teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Sana Krasikov is the author of the story collection One More Year, which received a National Book Foundation’s ‘5 under 35’ Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Prize. Her novel The Patriots was chosen for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists list and won France’s Prix du Premier prize for best new novel in translation. Her next book, The Shelf Life of Evelyn Shine, a novel about the cultural politics surrounding children’s literature in the ‘80s, to be out in early 2024. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Zoetrope, the O.Henry Anthology, and will appear in the upcoming Best American Short Stories of 2023. Sana has written extensively for podcasts and with her husband, Gregory Warner, helped create the narrative podcast Rough Translation on NPR, which brought listeners personal stories from around the world. She grew up in Katonah and now lives in Chappaqua.

Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a “Best Memoir of 2020” by Amazon. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, a modern reinterpretation of Ulysses that was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her essays have been widely published and anthologized. In 2021, the American Civil Rights Museum named her a “Woman You Should Know.” She currently serves as President of the Authors Guild.

Ann Leary is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels, The Children, The Good House, Outtakes from a Marriage, and the memoir, An Innocent, a Broad. She has written for numerous publications including Ploughshares, NPR, Real Simple and the New York Times. Her novel, The Good House was adapted as a motion picture starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, recently released on dvd. Her new novel, The Foundling (Scribner/MarysueRucci) was released in May.

This free event is open to all and takes place in the accessible lower level Garden Room. Light refreshments. Books will be available to purchase and for signing, courtesy of Booksy Galore.