The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library present the 2026 Breakfast with the Authors panel, which will take place at Concord’s Colonial Inn, 48 Monument Square. The event will be moderated by local author and physician, Dr. Suzanne Koven.
CFA Breakfast tickets can be purchased at the Barrow Bookstore as well as online on the CFA website. This event includes a full buffet breakfast at Concord’s Colonial Inn.
* Please note that the room is not handicap accessible. Please contact the Colonial inn for assistance.
Castellani and bookChristopher Castellani is the author of five books, most recently the novel Leading Men, for which he received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Leading Men was published by Viking Penguin, and is currently being adapted for film by Peter Spears (Oscar-winning producer of Nomadland) and Searchlight Pictures. The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story, a collection of essays on point of view in fiction, was published in 2016 by Graywolf Press.. His first novel, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin, 2003) won the Massachusetts Book Award; its follow-up, The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin, 2005), was a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; the final novel in the trilogy, All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award. Christopher is currently the Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, on the faculty and academic board of the Warren Wilson MFA program, and the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Last Seen was published on February 17th, 2026 by Viking Penguin.
Gish JenGish Jen’s work has been included in The Best American Short Stories five times, including in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. A fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received NEA, Guggenheim, and Radcliffe fellowships, a Lannan Literary Award, and a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award. Her short work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and many anthologies; she has taught at Harvard University, NYU Shanghai, and other universities. Bad Bad Girl is her sixth novel; her other books include two collections of short stories and two works of non-fiction, including publication of her Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.
Hester Kaplan is the author of two story collections, The Edge of Marriage (University of Georgia Press, and Norton), which received The Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction; and Unravished (Ig Publishing); the novels The Tell (HarperCollins) and Kinship Theory (Little, Brown). Her stories and essays have appeared in Agni Review, Ploughshares, Story, Glimmer Train, Southwest Review, and Indiana Review, among other journals and publications. Her work has been widely anthologized, including in The Best American Short Stories, Creature Needs, Providence Noir, Beautiful Flesh, and others. Recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two fellowships in literature from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, she was named Mark Twain Fellow for her new book, Twice Born (Catapult, 2025). Her work has received the McGinnis Ritchie Award for Non-fiction, The Salamander Award for Fiction, among other awards and recognitions.
Suzanne Koven, longtime host of the CFA Breakfast with the Authors, received her B.A. in English literature from Yale and her M.D. from Johns Hopkins. She also holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. In 2019 she was named inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass General. Her essays, articles, blogs, and reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The New Yorker.com, Psychology Today, The L.A. Review of Books, The Virginia Quarterly, STAT, and other publications. Her monthly column “In Practice” appeared in the Boston Globe and won the Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Writing from the American Medical Writers Association in 2012. Her interview column, “The Big Idea,” appears at The Rumpus. Suzanne conducts workshops, moderates panel discussions, and speaks to a variety of audiences about literature and medicine, narrative and storytelling in medicine, women’s health, mental healthcare, and primary care and co-directs the Media and Medicine Certificate Program at Harvard Medical School. Suzanne’s essay collection, Letter to a Young Female Physician, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2021. Her memoir, The Mirror Box: A Doctor’s Story will be published by W.W. Norton & Co. on March 23, 2027. Koven was born and raised in New York City. After her residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has practiced primary care internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for over 30 years.
For more information on the Concord Festival of Authors, please visit www.concordfestivalofauthors.org.
