This one’s for the books: Authors get ready for festival Saturday
WILLIAMSBURG — The
2024 edition of the Williamsburg Book Festival is Saturday and will feature more than 40 authors.
Laura Elliott of Great Falls will be this year’s young adult author, and Crozet resident Mollie
Cox Bryan, the author of three mystery book series, has been selected as the festival’s keynote speaker. A poets panel is scheduled for the afternoon.
Elliott was recently named the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, which is administered by the Reinberger Children’s Library Center at Kent State University.
The winning book, “Bea and the New Deal Horse,” is set during the Great Depression and focuses on a young girl, a horse and efforts to save the farm where they live.
After 20 years as a senior writer with Washingtonian magazine, Elliott turned to historical fiction.
Her first effort, “Under a War-Torn Sky,” was inspired, she said, by her father’s experiences as a B-24 pilot during World War II.
Elliott was drawn to writing for teens because “they have a way
of cutting to the pitch of a matter … and have not yet been conditioned to accept compromises or apathy. Their righteous indignation at the injustices of the world prods me as I write.”
Her book subjects have ranged from the American Revolution and Alexander Hamilton to the Civil War and the Cold War-divided Germany. As a journalist, she had diverse beats at the magazine, including health, mental health and performing arts.
“I think journalism, in many ways, is the best training for a novelist.”
Being a reporter, Elliott said, “also really trained me to spot a story and recognize a hole in coverage that needed filling. Most of my novels explore a little-remembered story.”
She said so many of the readers of her 2022 book, “Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves,” told her that they didn’t know that
German U-boats patrolled the coast and attacked merchant vessels during World War II.
Bryan is best known for her cozy “light-hearted” mysteries with “an edge.” She has several mystery series, which run two or three books.
She uses various names as an author, including Maggie Blackburn. Her latest book, “The
Lace Widow: An Eliza Hamilton Mystery,” is the first historical fiction released under the pen name Mollie Ann Cox.
Bryan lives at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and works full-time for University of Virginia Health.
Her approach to a new mystery book is simple: “I start with characters and think what’s the worst thing that could happen to them. I have a really active imagination — sometimes to my detriment. But honestly, part of the magic of writing is having a vivid imagination.”
Among Bryan’s mystery series are Shenandoah Hearts, Charlotte Donovan, Beach Reads, Eliza Hamilton and Cora Crafts.
Her books have been selected as finalists for an Agatha Award, and she was a finalist for a Daphne du Maurier Award of the Romance Writers of America.
She also was shortlisted for the Virginia Library’s People’s Choice Award.
Bryan is finishing her third book in the Charlotte Donovan
series. The first two are mysteries about movie stars Audrey Hepburn and Jean Harlow.