Authors 2025 - Cape Cod Book Festival

Authors & Moderators 2025

Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is an internationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have collectively sold 42 million copies worldwide; have been published in 51 territories and in 48 languages around the world; and have been made into Emmy Award-winning and critically-acclaimed television movies.

Lois Cahall (moderator)

Lois Cahall spent a decade writing women’s, men’s and food articles for Hearst and Conde Nast publications. She is the author of three novels: The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery (2025), Court of the Myrtles (2015) and the #1 best-seller PLAN C: Just in Case (2012). Lois is the former Creative Director of Development for James Patterson Entertainment and the Founder of both Cape Cod Book Festival and Palm Beach Book Festival.

Joseph Finder

Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of 17 novels, most recently The Oligarch’s Daughter. His books have won numerous awards, including the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics Award, and the Barry Award. Two of his novels have been made into major motion pictures, High Crimes and Paranoia.

Leigh Haber (moderator)

Leigh Haber is an independent editor, writer, and consultant. For ten years she ran Oprah’s Book Club and curated the Reading Room section of O, the Oprah Magazine until it closed. After that, she was the founding books director of Oprah Daily. She’s on the board of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.

Leigh is a long-time member of the book publishing community, spending decades as a book editor. Among the authors whose books she edited: Al Gore, Steve Martin, Bill Maher, Terry Gross, Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Candace Bushnell, and Rosalynn Carter.

She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, and has two grown sons and an adorable two-year-old grandson.

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean is an American journalist, television writer, and bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to many magazines including Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside.

Eliana Ramage

Eliana Ramage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received residences and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center: A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family.

Lizz Schumer (moderator)

Lizz Schumer is the senior books editor at People Magazine, overseeing all things books on all platforms. She previously led books coverage at Good Housekeeping Magazine, where she founded the Good Housekeeping Book Club and has also written for Woman’s Day, Prevention, the New York Times, and many other publications. She’s also a writing coach at the New York Writing Room, teaches journalism courses at New York University and is the author of Biography of a Body and Buffalo Steel. Find Lizz online at lizzschumer.com or on Instagram at lizzschumer.