The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library present

The Debut Authors Panel 2025
featuring Nicky Gonzalez, Courtney Gustafson, Christine Murphy and Blue Nguyen

moderated by

Steve Edwards, Writer-In-Residence at CFPL

Saturday, October 25, 2025, 2:00 PM
Fowler Branch, 1322 Main Street

Steve Edwards, 2025 Writer-in-residence at CFPL

A professor of English studies at Fitchburg State University and a visiting lecturer at Tufts University, he lives in the area with his wife and son.

Steve Edwards is the author of the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry, the story of the seven months he spent as the lone caretaker of a remote homestead along the federally designated “Wild and Scenic” Rogue River in Oregon. He is also the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Fiction/Nonfiction, and the author of essays that have appeared in The Sun, Orion, Literary Hub, and Longreads, including works dedicated to Henry David Thoreau and the natural and literary spaces of Concord and beyond. His latest work, an essay about the intersection of writing, mental health, and neurodiversity, was one of The Yale Review’s most-read articles in 2024.

Steve Edwards is the 2025 Writer-in-Residence at the Concord Free Public Library.

CFA 2025 DEBUT AUTHOR PANELISTS

Nicky Gonzalez

Nicky Gonzalez is a writer from Hialeah, Florida. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and other publications. She has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Granum Foundation, Millay Arts, Lighthouse Works, and the Hambidge Center. Mayra, a literary Gothic novel set in the Everglades, is her first book.

Courtney Gustafson

Courtney Gustafson is a cat rescuer, community organizer, and creator of Poets Square Cats on TikTok and Instagram.

Originally from Massachusetts, and an alum of both Fitchburg State University and UMass Amherst, she now lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.

Her first book, Poets Square: a Memoir in Thirty Cats, debuted on the New York Times Bestsellers list.

Christine Murphy
Photo Credit: Eliza Mead Photography

Christine Murphy has lived, worked, and traveled in more than a hundred countries, including living for eleven months in a tent across the African continent and a year as a resident in a Buddhist nunnery in the Himalayas.

A trained Buddhologist, Murphy has a Ph.D. in religious studies.

Notes on Surviving the Fire is her first novel.

Blue Nguyen

Blue Nguyen is a Vietnamese non-binary lesbian poet, artist, and organizer. Inspired by cartography and traditional symbolism in Viet architecture and culture–they research the architecture of grief, giving thanks, and livelihood. They work with poetic syntax, oral history, Vietnamese traditional woodworking, textile, and fiber techniques using organic materials. Their artistic journey began with poetry as a translation on grief, an act of prayer. Now as they research using materials off the page, their work questions what can a poem be made of– prayer as poetics, poetics as prayer. Material as an altar.

In their free time they enjoy creating mixed media art using anything they can find in their apartment, weaving with yarn and fibers, learning how to woodwork, making sweet and slow breakfast in the morning with their girlfriend/người yêu, and singing bird songs to the moon. Blue's poems explore translation as an act of weaving time and grief, as prayer, as apology. Much of Blue's work is an ode to their ancestors, their family (chosen and not chosen), their lesbian (t4t) love, and queer viet grief and joy.

Their art is most recently featured at 50 Arrow Gallery in a duo-collab exhibit with their người yêu titled, What the River Sees. Their poetry can be found at Palette Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and more. Nominated for Best of the Net Anthology and Best New Poets Anthology, their debut book Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam? is out now with GameOverBooks.

For more info, visit https://bluenguyen.com/