Writer, professor to offer advice on suspense fiction

A Benicia author and Mills College English professor participating Saturday in BookFest Solano will give prospective writers tips on how to write suspense fiction readers can’t put down.

Award-winning author Kathryn Reiss’s talk, “By the Pricking of My Thumbs,” will be Saturday at noon.

Reiss is among five Benicia writers participating in the event. Poet Laureate Don Peery, Frances Jackson and Peter Bray will speak at 11 a.m. Saturday as “Three Poets Writing,” and past Poet Laureate Lois Requist also will speak about poetry at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Reiss’s first novel, “Time Windows,” was awarded Maryland’s Blackeyed Susan Young Reader Medal and the Young Adult Library Services Association Popular Paperback for Young Adults Award. Among her other recognized works, “Pale Phoenix” and “PaperQuake: A Puzzle” have been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Reiss, who earned degrees at Duke University and the University of Michigan, has been a Fulbright scholar in Bonn, Germany, where she wrote her first draft of “Time Windows.”

She will speak at noon Saturday at BookFest Solano, a celebration of reading and writing. The event is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Hampton Inn, 800 Mason St., Vacaville. Admission is free for most activities. Learn more at www.BookFestSolano.com.