Featured Speaker, Jessamine Chan, Illinois Author of the Year

Jessamine Chan holds a B.A. from Brown University and a MFA from Columbia University. Chan worked as a reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, and her stories have appeared in Tin House and EPOCH. Her debut novel The School for Good Mothers is a New York Times Bestseller and was included on The Today Show host Jenna Bush Hager’s “Read with Jenna” book list. It was a finalist for the 2023 John Leonard Prize awarded by the National Book Critics Circle. Freckle Films, a production company owned by Jessica Chastain, purchased the rights for a TV adaptation of A School for Good Mothers.

jessaminechan.com

Lifetime Membership Award, Gary Anderson