Keynote Speakers And Special Guests
Our theme this year is… Write the good write.
We are absolutely thrilled to announce our 2023 DFWCon keynotes! Over the weekend, we will welcome the award-winning, best-selling author, publisher, and philanthropist Dave Eggers. We’ll also be painting the town (and the front porch) for the author, actress, mother, and humanitarian Evangeline Lilly. They, along with special guest, bestselling author Jayne Allen, and our many speakers, are going to make this a year you won’t want to miss.

Dave Eggers
Keynote Author
Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them: The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired over 70 similar organizations worldwide. Eggers is winner of the American Book Award, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Evangeline Lilly
Keynote Author
“I’m a compulsive daydreamer and a great believer in safe places of escape where we can explore our darkest fears and our most ridiculous hopes. I couldn’t stop writing if I tried.”
From the big screen to the little pages of her The Squickerwonkers book series, Evangeline Lilly is passionate about bringing stories and worlds to life. Between being a mother of two, a devoted humanitarian, a social activist and a busy professional, she has published three The Squickerwonkers books and produced and voiced four The Squickerwonkers audiobooks. She is currently hard at work on multiple new book titles both in and out of her SquickerWorld while reprising her reoccurring role in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp franchise.
From the big screen to the little pages of her The Squickerwonkers book series, Evangeline Lilly is passionate about bringing stories and worlds to life. Between being a mother of two, a devoted humanitarian, a social activist and a busy professional, she has published three The Squickerwonkers books and produced and voiced four The Squickerwonkers audiobooks. She is currently hard at work on multiple new book titles both in and out of her SquickerWorld while reprising her reoccurring role in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp franchise.

Jayne Allen
Special Guest
Jaunique Sealey, writing fiction under the pen name “Jayne Allen,” is the author of the bestselling Black Girls Must Die Exhausted trilogy, published by HarperPerennial/HarperCollins. Jayne’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, featured on Good Morning America, and selected as a Target Book Club pick. She has appeared in USA Today, BuzzFeed, Essence, Shondaland, Ms. Magazine, Detroit’s HOUR Magazine, and Kirkus Magazine alongside many other national and local media platforms and podcasts. In 2022, the BLACK GIRLS trilogy was optioned by AGC Studios and is currently in development as a television series, with Ms. Allen serving as a co-executive producer.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, Jayne spent a decade as an entertainment attorney and another decade following as an entrepreneur and marketing executive, serving as a founder and/or founding executive management for five companies. She is currently a member of the Council of the Authors Guild and serves on the Diversity Committee.
A strong proponent of “reach as you climb,” since 2018, through her Book Genius online platform, Jayne has shared marketing and publishing industry expertise with other authors and aspiring authors in high-impact, quality educational formats, furthering a goal of shepherding new voices into self-sustaining careers.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, Jayne spent a decade as an entertainment attorney and another decade following as an entrepreneur and marketing executive, serving as a founder and/or founding executive management for five companies. She is currently a member of the Council of the Authors Guild and serves on the Diversity Committee.
A strong proponent of “reach as you climb,” since 2018, through her Book Genius online platform, Jayne has shared marketing and publishing industry expertise with other authors and aspiring authors in high-impact, quality educational formats, furthering a goal of shepherding new voices into self-sustaining careers.

Michael Merschel
Keynote Moderator
Michael Merschel's three decades in journalism included 12 years as books editor for The Dallas Morning News. He’s conducted onstage interviews with authors such as Khaled Hosseini, Susan Orlean, Kwame Alexander and Fredrik Backman. Mike also wrote the novel Revenge of the Star Survivors, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ award for best middle-grade book in 2018. Before that, he contributed to public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and composed an out-of-office reply that was mentioned in The New York Times and featured on NPR.