Festival Authors
Alicia DeFonzo is a Senior Lecturer and Fulbright Specialist at Old Dominion University, having earned an MFA in Nonfiction. The Library Journal has called her debut nonfiction narrative The Time Left Between Us “a deeply personal venture but also one of significant importance now and for all future generations to learn from,” and Lincoln Journal Star says, “The author has the skill to make her intimate family portraits as precise as a song by Frank Sinatra.” DeFonzo has read for series such as Miss Manhattan Nonfiction and Inner Loop and is a frequent literary guest on local and national NPR programs.
Born and raised in a small town in Central Siberia at the time when the Soviet Union was falling apart, Artem Mozgovoy began his career as a cadet journalist in a local newspaper when he was sixteen; at twenty-six he was an editor-in-chief. In 2011, as Russia began legalizing its persecution of gay people, he left his homeland. Having lived in six different countries, including the US, and worked as a movie extra, a yoga instructor, and a magician’s assistant, Artem today holds a Luxembourgish passport, speaks five languages and, with his Romanian partner, lives in Belgium.