Nghi Vo is the USA Today bestselling, Hugo Award-winning author joining the Salt Lake Book Festival to introduce her newest novel, The Scarlet Ball (Tor Books, October 6, 2026), a Gilded Age fantasy that weds the glittering ballrooms of Edith Wharton’s New York with a gothic vision of demonic marriage and disguise. The novel follows Judith Ban, a courtesan and failed thief who assumes a missing heiress’s identity to infiltrate New York’s legendary high society — and finds she must seduce a demon disguised as a man to survive the season.

Vo is known for prose that is as sharp as it is sumptuous, and for fantasy that interrogates power, performance, and who gets to tell the story. Her novels include Siren Queen, The Chosen and the Beautiful (a queer reimagining of The Great Gatsby), and The City in Glass, alongside the acclaimed Singing Hills Cycle novellas, which began with the Hugo Award-winning The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and Lambda Literary Awards, among others.

Born in Illinois, Vo now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. Join her at the Salt Lake Book Festival for a conversation that promises equal parts glamour, danger, and desire.