Here’s your chance to meet and greet five local writers all in one afternoon, as Beaverdale Books presents its bi-annual Local Author Fair.  Whether you are an aspiring writer or just a fan of writers, don’t miss this opportunity to hear these local authors share their stories, their creative process, how published their work, and what’s next in their writing journey.  Of course, we will have copies of their books available for sale and signing.

Silly Animal Tales and Silly Animal Tales 2 are a collection of fast and fun limerick for kids.  Each page is a new story and illustration about a whole new critter! Lions, Tigers, Bears…and a pet rock?! Silly Animal Tales 3 and Silly Pet Tales will be coming out in 2025, so the goofy limericks will continue with names I’ve picked up along the way. The author loves to use uncommon names so kids (and adults) can see their name in a book!

Lauren Joiner is a new children’s author from West Des Moines. She started Lors Art Corner in 2020 as a way to share her passion for art and creativity. Her husband suggested she publish a kids book back in 2020, but procrastination is her middle name. She finally gained the courage to self-publish in 2024 after getting motivation from IABE where she was selling her artwork. Silly Animal Tales includes 2020 illustrations that were hand drawn, then digitized as she didn’t know how to digitally draw back then. She decided to keep the original illustrations and combine them with the new characters to show that anyone can improve with practice as long as they don’t give up!

Uncharted Territory, by Tiffany Killoren, is full of stories.  The stories may have come in all shapes and sizes over the years, but in her heart, Killoren simply loved to tell them. As an attorney, she understood that each case is a story, full of facts that will shape the opinion of the person who hears it based on how it’s told. As a magazine writer, she enjoyed diving into complex topics that required her to challenge herself, interviewing experts and educating herself to craft a finished product that she felt fortunate and honored to be a part of. As a magazine editor, she was drawn to the obscure, the stories that aren’t often told, but which have so much to say. And, as an author, she shapes her own fictional worlds, creating characters with beautiful flaws that she wishes she could sit down and get to know over a latte.

Tiffany Killoren’s first novel, Six Weeks in Petrograd, is autobiographical. At a professional crossroads in her own life, she wrote the novel about a young attorney struggling to find her way in a world that had already been set in motion. In a way, that summed up where Tiffany had found herself after jumping on a lawyer train that started going in a direction she wasn’t so sure she wanted to go in life. So, after publishing her first novel, she took a deep breath and jumped off that train to pursue her dream of writing. Tiffany’s novel, Good Will is a tale of serendipity, that follows the lives of four women, all of whom find something they need in unlikely places and through unexpected relationships. It’s a novel about faith and friendship, about being open to the messages that life is sending you when the going gets tough. Her novel Uncharted Therapy was released in August 2024 and was followed by Pretty Dead Things, a debut mystery under the name Lilian West (.

Crashing Into America: A Radical Passage from India provides a unique perspective for understanding the chaos of America today.  The USA is still in an identity crisis that began in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement shook the country to its core. The anti-war and gender liberation movements deepened the questioning of the American story. Protests erupted across the country and continued for a decade. Assassinations and urban uprisings shattered the status quo. Radical new music reflected and reinforced the rapid changes.  Crashing Into America is a compelling story of innocence, curiosity, and rebellion. Jamie, the son of Scottish and American missionaries in newly independent India, is searching for identity. From the fear of being left alone as a young child in a boarding school in India to a young adult going back to “his America” in the throes of the Vietnam War, he struggles to find his purpose in a chaotic world.

Robbie Orr was raised in India as a missionary kid. His life was transformed by the decolonization wave that swept the world from1945-75. His mission became de-colonizing US American culture and his own mind. Orr is an anti-war activist, union organizer, father, grandpa and a great grandpa. And he keeps gaining new insights from each generation of musicians, activists, writers and kids.

Lacy Rose is an American author who loves to write gritty Motorcycle Club romances.  She loves multiple genres and can be found reading almost anything in her free time.  She lives with her husband and two children.  When she isn’t writing, her life is often filled with mayhem from kid’s school activities, so she reads and writes in her free time to escape reality.  Lacy enjoys sharing her stories with others, and they always have an HEA.  Be warned, there are triggers.

Another Dance tells the story of Annie Obless who, one year after the loss of her husband, still struggles with grief while raising her two young children. Her therapist insists that her healing is being halted by her inability to open up and share details of her husband’s death. Longing to move forward, but disinterested in a traditional support group, she enrolls in a ballroom dance class, seeking an escape from the constant flashbacks of her former life and the still-present flood of guilt. At the first night of Ballroom Basics, Annie meets Milo Warner, the handsome, enigmatic instructor who is eager to have a dance partner to help lead the class. As she attempts to master a variety of dance steps and juggle her responsibilities as a mother, Annie reluctantly begins to explore friendship and flirtation after Milo reveals his own experience with love and loss. In spite of her therapists’ warnings about starting a new relationship, a potential romance and the possibility of moving on drives Annie to seek solace in Milo as their connection deepens and intensifies. Can her time with Milo help her come to terms with who she is and who she needs to be for her children, or will Annie find herself opening up to more than she had planned?

Angela Youngers is a high school English and speech teacher in the Des Moines metro where she lives with her husband Jeremy and her two children, Tobias and Aubriana. She has a bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Communication Education from the University of Northern Iowa, an English endorsement, and a master’s in education from Viterbo University.  Angela loves reading; singing and dancing in her kitchen; attending her son’s soccer games; jamming out to the car radio with her daughter; having late night tea and deep talks with her husband; sending exasperated yet comical texts and memes to her friends; and, of course, writing whenever she is not grading student work or taking care of her family. NOTE: Her writing is a personal endeavor and is in no way affiliated with her school district of employment.