Mystery Making is a fun, fast-paced improv game in which authors, Kate Flora, Gary Braver (pen name of Gary Goshgarian), Joanna Schauffhausen, and Sarah Smith, will brainstorm on their feet to create a brand new mystery, using suggestions from the audience!

Panelists on this fun, fast-paced improv game will be:

Kate Flora: Kate Flora’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers’ discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty-four books spanning many genres including crime fiction, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. Flora has taught writing for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Brown University Continuing Education, The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the Cape Cod Writer’s Conference, and for Grub Street in Boston. She’s a former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founder of the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave conferences. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers. Flora divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine, where she gardens and cooks and watches the clouds when she’s not imagining her character’s dark deeds. www.kateclarkflora.com.

Gary Braver (pen name of Gary Goshgarian): is the award-winning and international bestselling author of 10 critically acclaimed medical thrillers and mysteries. His novels have been celebrated for their high-concepts, careful craftsmanship, well-rounded characters, and page-turning momentum. His novel FLASHBACK(starred review in Kirkus) is the only thriller to have won a Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. His latest book, CHOOSE ME (co-authored with Tess Gerritsen) was a #1 bestseller on Kindle and a bestseller in several foreign countries. His latest book, RUMOR OF EVIL, was published in October 2023 to rave reviews. Gary Braver’s novels have been translated into 16 languages, and three have been optioned for movies, including ELIXIR by director Ridley Scott. Under his own name, Gary Goshgarian, he is an award-winning Emeritus English professor at Northeastern University. He has also taught fiction-writing workshops throughout the United States and Europe. He is the author of six college writing textbooks. Website: www.garybraver.com.

Joanna Schauffhausen: Joanna Schaffhausen is the award-winning author of the Ellery Hathaway series. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked as a scientific editor in the field of drug development. Prior to that, she was an editorial producer for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, daughter, and an obstreperous basset hound named Winston.

Sarah Smith: An Agatha winner and Massachusetts Book Award winner for her nt novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF DARK, Sarah Smith has been interested in ghosts and storytelling since she was four. She studied English at Harvard, where she hung out in the library reading mysteries, and film in London. She has written a bestselling adult mystery series set in the Edwardian period; two of the books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year, one was a London Times Book of the Year, and the first, THE VANISHED CHILD, is being made into a musical. Her standalone novel about the Shakespeare authorship, CHASING SHAKESPEARES, is being made into a play. Her most recent novel is CRIMES AND SURVIVORS, a multi-cultural mystery about the Titanic.