Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Laura VanArendonk Baugh

AWX is pleased to announce bestselling author Laura VanArendonk Baugh as a guest for this year’s convention. Laura is the author of a half-dozen books and quite a few short stories, including the award-winning Kitsune Tales series, a fantasy series set in Heian-era Japan and based on Japanese folklore, and Con Job, a murder mystery set in the world of fan conventions. Her nonfiction book Fired Up, Frantic, and Freaked Out had spent an incredible 105 weeks as an Amazon bestseller as of this writing and sold more than 17,000 copies. Laura is the winner of the 2012 Luminis Award for Kitsune-Tsuki and her story “And Only the Eyes of Children” has been nominated for the prestigious 2015 Pushcart Prize.

No stranger to fandom, Laura has been involved with fan conventions for well over a decade. She hones her geek cred in award-winning cosplay, playing Pathfinder and other games, and generally nerding out. When she’s not writing, Laura trains animals and travels the country or internationally to teach about behavior and training.

At AWX 2015 she will speak on a variety of topics including Japanese folklore and mythology, fiction writing, and the publishing industry, and she will also give a reading from antique collections of Japanese fairy tales.

Read more about Laura at www.LauraVanArendonkBaugh.com, or find her on Twitter at @Laura_VAB.