April 21: Randall Peffer and Ann Hood

Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of the novel The Knitting Circle and the forthcoming memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Paris Review, Bon Appetit, Traveler, and many more publications. She has won two Pushcart Prizes, The Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and a Best American Spiritual Writing Award.

Randall Peffer has written extensively in genres ranging from nonfiction, travel, and memoir through naval fiction and literary detective novels. His most recent work, Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears, is the fourth installment of the Cape Islands Mystery series, and in November, he introduced a Civil War naval trilogy with Southern Seahawk. His first publication, Watermen, which described the lives of Chesapeake Bay fishermen, won the Baltimore Sun's Critic's Choice award and was Maryland Book of the Year in 1985. Provincetown Follies/Bangkok Blues, the first of the Cape Islands Mystery series, was a finalist for the Lambda Award. His travel pieces appear in most major metro daily papers, and in magazines like National Geographic, Smithsonian, Reader's Digest, Travel Holiday, Islands, and Sail.

Randy captained the research schooner Sarah Abbot for 14 years, and has also worked as a commercial fisherman. Currently, he teaches literature and writing at Phillips Academy/Andover.