We are proud to announce our LTUE 43 Guests of Honor, Toastmaster, and Spotlight Guests for 2025.
Paul Durham
LTUE 43 GUEST OF HONOR
Paul Durham is the award-winning author of The Luck Uglies series (HarperCollins) and The Last Gargoyle (Crown). The Luck Uglies has been translated into six languages, and was named an ALA Notable Book and a New York Public Library Top 100 Book For Reading and Sharing. Paul was raised in Massachusetts and attended college and law school in Boston. He has a not-so-secret alter ego as a corporate and intellectual property lawyer, and now lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two daughters. He writes in an abandoned chicken coop at the edge of a swamp and keeps a tiny porcelain frog in his pocket for good luck.
Jennifer A. Nielsen
LTUE 43 GUEST OF HONOR
Jennifer A. Nielsen is the #1 New York Times Bestseller of several books for young readers, including THE FALSE PRINCE, A NIGHT DIVIDED, UPRISING, and her forthcoming title, ONE WRONG STEP. She also serves as the Utah Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Jennifer lives in Northern Utah with her family.
Isaac Stewart
LTUE 43 GUEST OF HONOR
Isaac Stewart has worked for over twenty years in the animation, video game, and publishing industries. He currently is the VP of Creative Development at Dragonsteel where he heads up the design of Dragonsteel’s art, books, products, and more. In addition to his work at Dragonsteel, Isaac has created maps and symbols for some of the world’s most renowned fantasy authors and is the author / artist of the children’s book Monsters Don’t Wear Underpants. When he has spare time, he works on writing the various fantasy stories he has in the works. He lives in Utah with his wife, children, and several cats.
Cameron Hopkin
LTUE 43 TOASTMASTER
Cameron Hopkin is a novelist and lecturer of psychology living in the Mountain West of the United States. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the fifth and final son of a grade-school teacher and a university professor. Over the years he has worked as an actor, a construction worker, a call-center desk jockey, a wedding DJ, a waiter, a theatrical set-builder, a census employee, a janitor, and a research assistant. Through it all, he was a voracious reading of fantasy and science fiction, and at some point he got it through his thick skull that writing them was even more fun than reading them. He lives with his wife, four daughters, dozens of chickens, and an avalanche of dogs in a state of absolute pandemonium. He began as an undergraduate at BYU and is happy to be back at BYU as a professor. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Duke University in 2015.
2025 Spotlight Guests
Rose Card-Faux
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Rose Card-Faux (she/her), and maker of other things, grew up in a house full of books and with a mind full of stories. As a child, she often blurred the lines between stories and reality, weaving tales for her friends about goblins living under their houses or butterflies being fairies in disguise.
Adam Heesch
Adam, a lifelong nature, art, and storytelling student started teaching drawing, painting, sculpture, illustration, and film studies in 2002 at a therapeutic boarding school. He served on the board of the Utah Art Education Association for several years, and is a frequent presenter. He works as an art specialist to bring real art skills to children in their formative years.
Benjamin K Hewett
Ben translates English to English for NASA, speaks French, mumbles German, and is slowly learning Arabic & Chinese. He won the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award, the 2019 Marburg Award in Germany, authored several short stories and novels. He loves time with his three kids, plays jazz piano, and juggles fire and has a BA in French, an MPA, and was once a fourth grade teacher.
David Howard
David’s most visible credit is Galaxy Quest. His TV credits include The Carver Brothers (Robert Deniro’s Tribeca Films for CBS), & Dead and Breakfast (Imagine Television). Live theatre credits include Falling for Eve (Off-Broadway at the York Theatre in 2010). He also wrote many plays – produced and published in anthologies. His new novel will be published soon.
Jennifer Hulet
Jennifer wrote the soon-to-be-self-published Never Quite—a behemoth novel best described as “odd literary fiction.” When not writing or working the day job to pay for writing, she likes being with her family, visiting with friends, doing anything on or in water, inventing problems she solves by buying something cool on Amazon, and talking to strangers until they share their deepest secrets (possibly just to get her to leave them alone).
Mari Murdock
Mari Murdock is a freelance table-top gaming writer based in Utah, best known for her work on the game Legend of the Five Rings, having written the Scorpion Clan novella Whispers of Shadow and Steel and other L5R fiction. She has also has worked on The Expanse RPG and Tiny Dungeons 2e. Her side hustles include work as a professional dungeon master and a college professor at Westminster College.
Peter Orullian
Peter Orullian is a published novelist and short story writer, as well as a professional musician and composer. He has published epic fantasy with Tor, and is currently collaborating with Brandon Sanderson on an contemporary fantasy series. He also recently wrote a full touring show in the vein of Trans-Siberian Orchestra which combines music and narrative in: The Bell Ringer.
Lehua Parker
Lehua writes speculative stories for kids and adults often set in her native Hawaii. Her publications include the Niuhi Shark Saga trilogy, Lauele Chicken Skin Stories, and Lauele Fractured Folktales and short stories, plays, poems, and essays. As an author, editor, and educator trained in literary criticism and advocate of indigenous cultural narratives, she frequently presents at conferences, symposiums, and schools.
C. David Belt
C. David Belt graduated from BYU with a BS in computer science and managed to bypass all English or writing classes. He served as a B–52 pilot in the US Air Force. When he is not writing, he sings in the Tabernacle Choir and works as a software engineer. He collects, researches, and teaches about swords, spears, and axes (oh, my!), and other medieval weapons and armor. www.unwillingchild.com
The full 2025 guest list will be available when the LTUE 43 (2025) program book is published shortly before the symposium begins. To get an idea of our offerings please look at the LTUE 42 (2024) program book where you can see the list of LTUE 2024 panels, presentations and guests. Click Schedule then click 2024 Program Book.