How it started
The Back Room was born during the Covid-19 pandemic. As in-person events shut down across the country, online author events began popping up.
But as Hank and Karen began attending and participating in these events, they found they were missing one critical element: interaction with the audience.
Hank and Karen dreamed up a format that featured Zoom breakout rooms so that authors weren’t simply presenting a talk to a silent audience and taking questions from the chat, but were able to chat directly with their readers in relaxed, informal conversation.
On September 27, 2020 the first Back Room event was launched and authors and readers loved it!
Since that time, over 250 authors have visited the Back Room, and our unique format continues to draw a loyal and enthusiastic following from around the world.
Praised for its professional format, the Back Room remains the only online event that allows authors and readers to chat face-to-face!
“I just have to give a shout out to Hank Phillippi Ryan and Karen Dionne. They have really hit on something very special with this Back Room idea. This concept is brilliant and so much fun. I can’t think of an event that was this much fun since the pandemic began . . . give this concept a try; I think you will be pleasantly surprised. It’s so well-run and just a total blast.”
– Kristopher Zgorski, Bolo Books
Meet Your Host | Karen Dionne
Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of two psychological suspense novels set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness, The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the U.S. and in 28 other languages.
Praised by The New York Times Book Review as “subtle, brilliant, and mature,” The Marsh King’s Daughter was named one of the best books of 2017 by iBooks and many other booksellers and reviewers, won the Barry and Crimson Scribe awards, and was released by Lionsgate in 2023 as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn.
Karen enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband on a small lake surrounded by forest in the middle of Michigan, where she also hosts the Muskrat Lodge Writers Retreats.
Named a Publisher’s Weekly best book of 2020, Karen’s newest novel is The Wicked Sister. “The Wicked Sister is massively thrilling and altogether unputdownable. Dionne is proving to be one of the finest suspense writers working today.” — Karin Slaughter, New York Times and internationally bestselling author
Meet Your Host | Hank Phillippi Ryan
USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan is the author of more than seventeen thrillers including All This Could Be Yours, One Wrong Word, and The House Guest which have won every major mystery award in the industry and have been translated into multiple languages throughout the world. Her fiction is inspired by a lifetime of groundbreaking true-crime stories from a storied career as an on-air investigative journalist for Boston’s WHDH-TV for which she was awarded multiple journalism honors, including and unprecedented thirty-seven Emmy Awards. A TedX speaker and in-demand literary moderator, Publishers Weekly calls her a “master of suspense.” A native of Chicago with roots in Indianapolis, Ryan lives in Boston.
Her most recent book is All This Could Be Yours, an instant USA Today bestseller and now the winner of the Mary Higgins Clark award, as well as an Anthony Award nominee for Best Hardcover Novel.
Her brand new thriller, coming September from Minotaur Books is Mother Daughter Sister Stranger.
What if your own family history turns out to be a terrifying lie? Every family has its story, and this one’s deadly. Two sisters. One secret. And a race against time to find the explosive truth.
A missing mother. Her frightened daughter. And a sister on a desperate search for a happy ending. But someone knows the deadly key to their shared past, and won’t stop until they’ve written a devastating final chapter. Mother, daughter, sister―stranger.