Laurie Lico Albanese

Martha Hines Kolko

Laurie Lico Albanese is an award-winning novelist and journalist. Hester is an Audible Best Book of 2022, an IndieNext and Canadian and American Librarians October 2022 selection, a Gillian Flynn Best Books of Fall 2022, a Book of the Month club selection, and a finalist in the Goodreads Best Books of the Year. Laurie’s novel "Stolen Beauty" was praised by the Wall Street Journal as “a work of art itself.” 

Albanese is a recipient of a Catherine R. Dodge Foundation Visiting Fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a Hadassah-Brandeis Research Award, and a New Jersey State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction Writing. She’s taught literature and writing workshops at Wager College, Stonecoast Summer Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine where she earned her Master's of Fine Arts, and elsewhere. Albanese's novels have been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and soon, Croatian. She lives with her husband in Montclair, N.J., where they raised their two grown children.

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Awards: Catherine R. Dodge Foundation Visiting Fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts / Hadassah-Brandeis Research Award / New Jersey State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction Writing

The Wide, Wild World of Fiction

Bestselling authors Jamie Ford, Laurie Albanese and T. Jefferson Parker have come to the festival with three very different stories featuring three very different women. What drew our authors to these particular people? Why were they important stories to tell? Let's find out!

UA Mall Tent (Seats 250)  
Sat, Mar 4, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Multigenre
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Central Mall (following presentation)  

Panelists: Laurie Albanese, Jamie Ford, T. Parker
Moderator: Becky Monroe

She Persisted

In this session, Laurie Albanese, Sadeqa Johnson, and Nghi Vo will discuss ways their protagonists refuse to let other people - and social norms - stand in the way of making their dreams a reality.

Modern Languages Room 350 (Seats 318, Wheelchair accessible)  
Sun, Mar 5, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Fiction / Literature
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Central Mall (following presentation)  

Panelists: Laurie Albanese, Sadeqa Johnson, Nghi Vo
Moderator: Emily Walsh

Inspired By ...

What makes a good story, and why are we drawn to them over and over again? In this session, our three authors will discuss their newest books -- each of which was inspired by some element of history, literature or mythology.

Koffler Room 218 (Seats 142, Wheelchair accessible)  
Sun, Mar 5, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Multigenre
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - UA BookStore Tent (on Mall) (following presentation)  

Panelists: Laurie Albanese, Scarlett St. Clair, Priscilla Oliveras
Moderator: Hannah Gomez

Books:

Hester

A Novel
Fiction / Literature
St. Martin's Publishing Group
October 2022
ISBN 9781250278555
Hardcover, 336 pages

A vivid reimagining of the woman who inspired The Scarlet Letter, and a journey into the enduring legacy of New England's witchcraft trials. Who is the real Hester Prynne? Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Glasgow for a fresh start in the New World. But only days after they've arrived in Salem, Edward abruptly joins a departing ship as a medic––leaving Isobel penniless and alone in a strange country, forced to make her way by any means possible. When she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two are instantly drawn to each other: he is a man haunted by his ancestors, who sent innocent women to the gallows––while she is an unusually gifted needleworker, troubled by her own strange talents. As the weeks pass and Edward's safe return grows increasingly unlikely, Nathaniel and Isobel grow closer and closer. Together, they are a muse and a dark storyteller; the enchanter and the enchanted. But which is which? In this sensuous and hypnotizing tale, a young immigrant woman grapples with our country's complicated past, and learns that America's ideas of freedom and liberty often fall short of their promise. Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, Hester is a timeless tale of art, ambition, and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men who try to shut it down. More/less

Stolen Beauty

A Novel
Fiction / Literature
Simon and Schuster
November 2017
ISBN 9781501131998
Trade Paperback, 320 pages

“A powerful and important tale of love and war, art and family…I was transported. ” —Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author “Albanese artfully weaves Adele’s story with Maria’s harrowing life under the Nazis, but it’s hard to read Stolen Beauty without seeing ugly echoes in today’s headlines. Seven decades after World War II, have we learned nothing?” —USA TODAY From the dawn of the twentieth century to the devastation of World War II, this exhilarating novel of love, war, art, and family gives voice to two extraordinary women and brings to life the true story behind the creation and near destruction of Gustav Klimt’s most remarkable paintings. In the dazzling glitter of 1903 Vienna, Adele Bloch-Bauer—young, beautiful, brilliant, and Jewish—meets painter Gustav Klimt. Wealthy in everything but freedom, Adele embraces Klimt’s renegade genius as the two awaken to the erotic possibilities on the canvas and beyond. Though they enjoy a life where sex and art are just beginning to break through the façade of conventional society, the city is also troubled by a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism as political hatred simmers in the shadows of Adele’s coffeehouse afternoons and cultural salons. Nearly forty years later, Adele’s niece Maria Altmann is a newlywed when the Nazis invade Austria—and overnight, her beloved Vienna becomes a war zone. When her husband is arrested and her family is forced out of their stately home, Maria must summon the courage and resilience that is her aunt’s legacy if she is to survive and keep her loved ones—and their history—alive. Will Maria and her family escape the grip of Nazi rule? And what will become of the paintings for which her aunt sacrificed nearly everything? Impeccably researched and a “must-read for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun” (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Stolen Beauty juxtaposes passion and discovery against hatred and despair, and shines a light on our ability to love, to destroy, and above all, to endure. More/less