After surrendering his goal of playing professional football, Eldon Thompson set out to publish a fantasy adventure novel. Upon his fifth year of study at the Maui Writers Retreat, he sold his Legend of Asahiel trilogy to HarperCollins. In it, he is dutifully following some of the longest-standing conventions of the genre... so that he can tear them all down and catch a reader or two by surprise. If that doesn't work, he is on the verge of making a splash in Hollywood—and hopes that he won't merely drown. His screenplay adaptation of Terry Brooks's Shannara is currently in development at Warner Bros.
See Eldon Thompson's books.

Patricia Wood was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She has served in the US Army, worked as a Medical Technologist, been a horseback-riding instructor, and most recently taught marine science in a public high school working with high-risk students in Honolulu.

She has attended the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference since 2005 and is currently a PhD student at the University of Hawaii, focusing on education, disability and diversity. Her debut novel Lottery is on the Washington Post Book World best fiction of 2007 list and was shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in the UK. Film rights have been optioned by the actress Sarah Michelle Gellar. See more on Patricia Wood.

Wendy Merrill is described by Anne Lamott as “…a wonderful new voice—smart, funny and wildly real.” Wendy’s embarrassing honest memoir, Falling into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl (Putnam 2008), was sold at the Maui Writers Conference in 2006. In it, “…Merrill reveals her constant struggles with life, love and addiction in this absolutely hilarious memoir.”—Library Journal.  Her personal essays also appear in the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age (Inner Ocean, 2006) and, Single State of the Union (Seal Press, 2007). Wendy founded WAM Marketing Group, a unique marketing communications company based in Sausalito, CA, where she currently lives above ground and beyond her means. See more about Wendy.

     Past attendee, Linda Collison, “I got my agent Laura Rennert through the Maui Writers Conference Manuscript Marketplace.  Nancy Holder was my instructor in the MWC's advanced novelist writer's course, and back in 1996 I was one of two Maui Writers Conference grand prize winners for my fiction (entitled, With a Little Luck) judged by Don McQuinn and John Saul.  Although With a Little Luck never had any luck being published, I continued to attend the Conference, wrote another novel, and about three years ago Laura Rennert sold my book, Star-Crossed, to Michelle Frey, Christopher Paolini's (Eragon) editor at Knopf!  Star-Crossed was published in November.  I am so grateful to the Maui Writers Conference for my success!” www.lindacollison.com »