Jeannine A. Cook is a writer, cultural curator, multidisciplinary artist, and founder of the avant-garde bookshop concepts Harriett’s Bookshop in Philadelphia, Ida’s Bookshop in South Jersey, and Josephine’s, a literary installation in Paris. Known for blending literature, ritual, travel, music, visual art, and community-building, Cook has emerged as a distinctive creative voices working at the intersection of storytelling and place-making.

Her debut novel, It’s Me They Follow (Amistad/HarperCollins), introduced readers to a surreal, emotionally layered world where books become portals for intimacy and transformation. Her follow-up memoir, Shut Up & Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop, further established Cook as a genre-fluid writer whose work merges memoir, spiritual reflection, literary criticism, activism, and cultural commentary.

Cook’s books and writing have been featured or reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Shelf Awareness, Booklist, The Bookseller, Book Riot, Essence, BET, Ms. Magazine, Women’s World, Cleaver Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Informer, and other literary and cultural outlets. Shut Up & Read received a starred review from Shelf Awareness.

Harriett’s Bookshop and Cook’s cultural work have been featured by Oprah Daily, The New York Times, Vogue, The Today Show, MSNBC, The Kelly Clarkson Show, WHYY, BET, Essence, and other national and international media outlets.

In addition to her literary work, Cook creates immersive literary arts installations centered on listening, migration, and ritual. Her installations have been featured at Princeton University, Galerie Au Médicis in Paris, Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), and Camden FireWorks.

A former curriculum designer for the American Friends Service Committee and community engagement specialist for The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, Cook’s work often explores interior lives, liberation, listening practices, literary pilgrimage, and the power of books as sites of resistance and belonging.

Cook has interviewed and hosted literary and cultural icons including Michelle Obama, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker, Ibram X. Kendi, Isabel Wilkerson, and Will Smith. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Drexel University, an MA in Design Education from the University of the Arts, and a BA in Media & Communication.

Through her writing, exhibitions, tours, salons, and immersive literary experiences, Cook continues to build spaces where books are not merely read, but lived.

Kathleen Volk Miller is the author of “Teaching Writing Through Journaling: Journaling as a Tool for Learning and Well Being” (Bloomsbury, 2025). She has written for LitHub, NYT Modern Love, O, the Oprah magazine, Salon, the NYTimes, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Family Circle, Philadelphia Magazine and other venues. She is co-editor of the anthology, Humor: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2014). She is co-editor of The Painted Bride Quarterly and co-host of PBQ’s podcast, Slush Pile. She has also published in literary magazines, such as Drunken Boat, Opium, and other venues. She holds “Healing through Writing” workshops, and other memoir classes. She consults on literary magazine start up, working with college students, and getting published in literary magazines. She is a professor at Drexel University.

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the nationally bestselling author of two books of fiction— Fat Swim and Housemates, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize — and the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared widely including in The Yale Review, Granta, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Cut, TIME, The New York Times Review of Books, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts, and is a 2026 Pew Foundation fellow. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Tin House and others, and has taught creative writing at Wesleyan University, Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College, Temple University and independently.

Megha Majumdar is the author of the novel A Guardian and a Thief, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award and Kirkus Prize, and winner of the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal, as well as named a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. Her debut novel, the New York Times bestseller A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, among other honors. Born and raised in Kolkata, India, and educated at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, she now lives in New York.

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook—which was made into an Oscar-winning film—and eight other novels, including We Are the Light, a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, a Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis 2016 (German Youth Literature Prize) nominee, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR. The Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. Matthew lives with his wife, the novelist Alicia Bessette, in Beaufort, South Carolina.