JRW Conference 2007
Speaker and Moderator Bios

More bios and photos coming soon!

Gigi Amateau’s first young adult novel, Claiming Georgia Tate (Candlewick Press, 2005), described as “a moving first offering” by School Library Journal, was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, Voice of Youth Advocates Review Editor’s Choice, and a Book Sense Children’s Pick. It was also nominated for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Children’s Book Award and the American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults list. Gigi lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and daughter. Among other upcoming titles, she is working on her first middle-grade novel, Chancey of the Maury River Band, which will be published by Candlewick in 2008. website: www.gigiamateau.com

Bill Blume (JRW Board Member) is a fantasy writer whose short stories have been published in Spinetingler Magazine.  He is the creator of the online comic strip “The Wildcat’s Lair.”  He’s also chair of the organizing committee for the 2007 James River Writers Conference and is a member of the “Ten Page Club.”  Bill earned a BA in Journalism from University of South Carolina and worked as a news producer for WTVR-TV in Richmond until 2001 . blog: wildcatslair.blogspot.com

Sheri Blume has volunteered with James River Writers since 2004, served as the Conference Committee Chair in 2006 and is a member of the this year's Conference Committee. When she's not working at her day job as a teller for SunTrust bank, she writes a fantasy series with her husband, Bill. She's also a member of the "Ten Page Club" as well as a 2005 and 2006 participant of NaNoWriMo.

Liv Blumer

James Campbell has written for Outside magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, Audubon, as well as many other publications.  He released his first book The Final Frontiersman was released by Atria Books in 2004.  His latest book The Ghost Mountain Boys, about a battalion of soldiers who walked across New Guinea in the World War II Battle of Buna, is scheduled to be released in October. website: www.jamesmcampbell.net

Clay Chapman (a member of JRW's Advisory Board) is the creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show, a rigorous storytelling session backed by its own live soundtrack. He is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel -- both published by Hyperion.  Chapman’s 2006 New York production of “Pearls,” part of an evening of one-act plays, was called "an assured bit of storytelling" that "brings to mind the cracked intensity and delusions of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver," by The New York Times, while the Village Voice called Chapman "enormously talented."

Shawna Christos has written various manuals and booklets for companies, including one local Fortune 500 company, and earned intercompany awards for graphics, art, computer and database work. Currently working on a novel, she is a founding member of the Ten Page Club, a volunteer for JRW, and serves on the current Conference Planning Committee.

Susann Cokal (JRW Board Member) is the author of two critically praised novels, Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, and of short stories that have appeared in numerous journals. She holds two PhD's: one from Berkeley in comparative literature, and one from Binghamton University in creative writing, and she has published critical work on writers such as Jeanette Winterson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Georges Bataille. She also reviews fiction for The New York Times Book Review. She moved to Richmond in 2004 to teach creative writing and contemporary literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. website: www.susanncokal.com

Andrew Corsello has been writing and editing for GQ Magazine for twelve years. Four of his stories there have been nominated for the National Magazine Award. The most recent of these, "The Other Side of Hate," about racial and spiritual reconciliation in Zimbabwe, won the 2007 National Magazine Award in the Features category.

A former staff writer for Self magazine, Constance Costas (JRW Co-chair) has covered health, fitness, medical, and parenting topics for Redbook, Health, Parents, Fitness, Shape, Ladies Home Journal, Working Woman, and Harper's Bazaar. Her essays have appeared in Skirt! magazine, where she has been a contributing editor and columnist.

Thom Didato is the publisher and founding editor of the award-winning online literary and arts magazine failbetter (www.failbetter.com). He has published stories in many literary journals and is the co-editor the widely used classroom text, The Fiction Gallery (Bloomsbury USA). The former Program Manager at The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Thom currently serves as the Graduate Programs Coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia native Claudia Emerson received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her third book of poetry, Late Wife. Her poetry has been published in a variety of magazines and journals including "The Southern Review," "The Louisville Review," "Poetry" and "Crazyhorse." Claudia works as an associate professor of English at the University of Mary Washington.

Earlier this year, Richard Ernsberger was named editor for “Virginia Living” magazine. Richard has also worked as an editor and writer for “Newsweek.” He’s written several sports-related books, including Bragging Rights and God, Pepsi, and Groovin’ on the High Side.

In addition to being Virginia’s current Poet Laureate, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda is a painter, sculptor and educator. She received two masters degrees and a Ph.D. from George Mason University. Her books include Contrary Visions, Gathering Light and Death Comes Riding. Her poetry has been awarded with three Pushcart Prize nominations, an Edgar Allen Poe first place award, three Artist-in-Education grants and one Arts-on-the-Road grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She lives in Hardyville, Virginia. website: www.carolynforonda.com

David Freedman is a business and science journalist who has written for “The Atlantic Monthly,” “Newsweek” and “Wired.” He’s also worked as a contributing editor and columist for “Inc.” magazine. David has written several books, including his most recent, A Perfect Mess (co-written with Eric Abrahamson), which looks at the benefits of disorder in business and nearly every other aspect of our lives.

Lee Gimpel covers business, technology, travel and culture for such publications as Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Budget Travel and Men's Journal. Currently he's at work on a book about visiting emergent India. website: www.gimpelwriting.com

Katharine Herndon is a member of the Ten Page Club and won second place in the Style Magazine fiction contest. She lives in Richmond with her husband and two children, who do their best to disrupt her writing.

Journalist Phaedra Hise's work has been anthologized and has appeared in publications including Forbes, Glamour, Salon, Ladies’ Home Journal, Prevention, Smithsonian Air & Space and The Boston Herald. She is a Contributor to Fortune Small Business, a Contributing Editor to Virginia Living and a former Staff Writer for Inc. Hise is also a VCCA fellow and has written four nonfiction books, most notably Pilot Error: Anatomy of a Plane Crash, called "a compelling page-turner" by the Boston Globe. Along with her husband and daughter, she lives in Richmond, Virginia. (JRW board member) website: www.phaedrahise.com

Woody Holton is a professor at the University of Richmond and an award-winning author of American history. Holton received the Merle Curti Social History Award for his book Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & The Making of the American Revolution in Virginia, which examines how such Virginia notables as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson joined other colonial leaders in rebellion of British rule in response to grassroots rebellions against their own rule. His latest book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (August 2007), is being published by Hill & Wang.

At the tender age of twelve, Sabrina Jeffries decided she wanted to be a romance writer. It took her eighteen more years and a boring stint in graduate school earning her Ph.D. in Early Modern British Literature before she sold her first book, but now her sexy and humorous historical romances routinely land on the USA Today and New York Times Extended bestseller lists and have won several awards. Beware a Scot’s Revenge is her 25th novel. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and son, where she writes full-time. website: www.sabrinajeffries.com  

Emyl Jenkins (JRW Board Member) wrote an author’s dozen non-fiction books, a monthly column for Art & Antiques, a syndicated antiques column, and countless magazine articles before turning her hand to fiction.  But when she did, she followed the advice often heard: Write what you know about.  Her first novel, Stealing With Style (Algonquin, June ’05), follows a Virginia antiques appraiser as she uncovers the greed and duplicity that heirlooms and cultural icons can inspire among thieves, antiques professionals, and just nice people.  Stealing With Style received a starred review from Booklist, was a Mystery Guild Book Club selection, has been translated into Japanese and Korean, and is available in large print. website: www.emyljenkins.com

Playwright Douglas Jones has written and seen produced more than forty plays, including the full-length musical Bojangles and his seven-year project Songs from Bedlam. Recent projects include the one-act play Frankenstein Lives!, which aired on Virginia's PBS stations, and four films commissioned by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation for its 400th Anniversary in 2007. His publishing credits also include poetry, short stories and nonfiction. Douglas has earned degrees with honors from the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia and has also taught at the University of Virginia, TheatreVirginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He lives in Richmond with his wife and daughter.

Caroline Kettlewell (JRW Co-Chair) is editor of the JRW e-newsletter Get Your Word On and is the author of two critically praised non-fiction books: the memoir Skin Game (St. Martin’s, 1999), and Electric Dreams (Carroll & Graf, 2004). Called "a can't-miss true story reminiscent of the movie Breaking Away," in a Publishers Weekly starred review, Electric Dreams has been optioned for feature film by Participant Productions. Kettlewell is a freelance writer and regular contributor of travel, adventure, and other stories to the Washington Post, and her work has appeared in two anthologies. She maintains a blog, Welcome to the Hinterlands, dedicated to narrative nonfiction. website: carolinekettlewell.com

Dean King (a member of JRW's Advisory Board) is a Richmond native and the author of Skeletons on the Zahara (Little, Brown, 2004), a national bestseller and Salon.com Top-Ten Books of the Year selection, which the San Francisco Chronicle called "one of the most absorbing and satisfying books to come out in a very long time." While researching the book, King crossed Western Sahara on camels and in Land Rovers. Skeletons is being developed as a feature film by DreamWorks. King is the author of nine books, including the biography Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed. His writing has appeared in such publications as Esquire, Mens' Journal, National Geographic Adventure, New York Magazine, and the New York Times. website: www.deanhking.com

Jon Kukla (JRW Board Member) has a new book, Mr. Jefferson's Women (Knopf) coming out in October, 2007. His A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (Knopf, 2003) was a main selection of the History Book Club and alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club. Kukla was graduated from Carthage College and took his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Since 2000 he has been executive vice-president and director of Red Hill – The Patrick Henry National Memorial in Charlotte County, Virginia.

Marcela Landres is an Editorial Consultant who edits manuscripts, critiques proposals, and advises on how to launch and manage a writing career. She was formerly an editor at Simon & Schuster and is the creator of Latinidad, one of Writer’s Digest magazine’s 101 Best Web Sites for Writers. A member of the Women’s Media Group, she has acted as a judge for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and speaks frequently for organizations such as The Learning Annex. website: www.marcelalandres.com

Mark Lazenby (JRW board member) is executive communications director at Dominion Resources, a $26 billion national energy company. Mark has directed company programs in the U.S., Latin America and Great Britain. Publications and speeches written by him or under his direction have won national awards and been used in university classrooms and professional writing seminars. Prior to his service at Dominion, Mark was a journalist for United Press International and for dailies in North Carolina and Virginia.

Literary writer Nancy Lemann has written four novels, including Malaise, which was released in 2004. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Vogue, Slate and The Oxford American. Nancy also received an MFA from Columbia University. Born in New Orleans, she now lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Eric Van Lustbader is the author of more than twenty-five bestselling thriller and fantasy novels since he was first published in 1975. In 2004, the estate of the late Robert Ludlum chose Eric to continue the populer “Jason Bourne” novels with The Bourne Legacy and The Bourne Betrayal (both New York Times Bestsellers). One of his most popular novels The Ninja was recently sold to 20th Century Fox to be made into a major motion picture. website: www.ericvanlustbader.com

Victoria Lustbader spent many years as an editor at Harper & Row and as a senior editor for Berkley/Putnam. During that time, she worked closely with authors such as Frank Herbert (Dune) and Ursula K. Le Guin (the “Earthsea” series). Her first novel Hidden was released by Forge Books last year. Her next novel, Stone Creek, is scheduled for release by HarperCollins in June 2008. website: www.victorialustbader.com

Sharyn McCrumb's award winning novels celebrating the history and folklore of Appalachia have received scholarly acclaim and ranked on the New York Times Best-Seller lists. The author of St. Dale, Ghost Riders, The Songcatcher, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, The Rosewood Casket, She Walks These Hills, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, as well as many other acclaimed novels, McCrumb's books have been named Notable Books for the Year by The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Her newest novel, Once Around the Track (Kensington, May 2007), is again set in NASCAR, and chronicles the adventures of an all-woman NASCAR team who hired a "pretty" male driver. The novel examines the mysterious chemistry that bonds fan to driver -- an attraction independent of victories, and any other quantifiable form of excellence, in many cases. Her novels, studied in universities throughout the world, are translated into German, Dutch, Japanese, and Italian. Her work has twice received the AWA's Best Appalachian Novel Award and the 2003 Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature. In October 2006, she was presented with the People's Choice Award in Fiction from the Library of Virginia for her work St. Dale. website: www.sharynmccrumb.com

New York Times Bestselling author Kyle Mills says he started in a standard corporate job that didn't give him the creative outlet he was looking for. So when he decided to try something different, his wife suggested writing a novel. An avid reader with a father who had been an FBI agent for twenty-five years, Kyle had plenty of material to work with. Eight months later, his first novel Rising Phoenix was complete. Since then he has written eight other novels, including Darkness Falls, which is scheduled for release in fall 2007. website: www.kylemills.com

Charles R. "Charlie" Munn is a nationally renowned management consultant, trainer, and free lance writer, specializing in human resources and transportation. In addition to authoring dozens of articles and several ongoing columns in trade magazines, Charlie has extensive experience as a technical writer for both public and private entities, producing special-use manuals and "how-to" books intended for in-house consumption. He is also currently at work on a history and his first novel.

Sherrie Page Najarian (JRW board member) is a freelance writer, essayist and registered nurse. Her essays have appeared in such publications as Richmond Magazine, Skirt!, Virginia Adversaria and various Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Additionally she has written for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Far West-End Press and numerous professional nursing journals. Sherrie is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Yale University. She works as a school nurse at St. Catherine's. Sherrie recently completed her first novel, a YA, which she hopes to publish soon.

Carolyn Parkhurst holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from American University. She has published fiction in the North American Review, the Minnesota Review, Hawai'i Review, and the Crescent Review. Her highly acclaimed, first novel The Dogs of Babel was published in 2003. Her second book Lost and Found was released last year. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children. website: www.carolynparkhurst.com

Lori Perkins has been a literary agent for 20 years, and is a published author herself, as well as an adjunct professor at N.Y.U.'s Center for Publishing. Perkins is President of L. Perkins Agency, which has foreign agents in 11 countries and working relationships with Hollywood agents. Perkins specializes in dark fiction and nonfiction about popular culture. She is also the author of four books, including The Cheapskate’s Guide to Entertainment and The Insider’s Guide to Getting a Literary Agent. blog: agentinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

Stephen Previtera is an author and graphic designer who runs his own publishing company, Winidore Press, known worldwide for its specialization in military history reference books. Combining a love of writing, design, collecting and history, Previtera has created new studies related to military artifacts and their relation with historic events. He is a contributing writer to World War II magazine and an advisor to the American Historical Foundation. His works on military decorations are found in history museums around the world. Stephen has also helped design many of JRW’s posters and other printed materials.

Virginia Pye (JRW board member) is a fiction writer and poet. Her stories and poems have appeared in The North American Review, Streetlight, Perogi Press and other literary magazines. In 2005, she completed a novel set in West Philadelphia, which a literary agent is currently trying to place with a publisher. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and a BA from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Virginia has taught writing and literature at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. She moved to Richmond seven years ago with her husband, VMFA Modern & Contemporary Art Curator John Ravenal, and their two children. 

Jenny Rappaport joined the L. Perkins Agency last year. She mostly represents science fiction, fantasy, horror, young adult fiction and romance. Prior to working at the L. Perkins Agency, Jenny worked with the Folio Literary Management. blog: litsoup.blogspot.com

Jessica Regel has worked at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc. for five years. She agents her own list of children's and adult books while also working in the subsidiary rights department, selling film, audio, and UK rights. She received her BA degree in English Literature from Hunter College. Her list includes edgy adult fiction, such as 6 Sick Hipsters by Rayo Casablaca, commercial young adult fiction, such as Heartbreakers by Pamela Wells, and middle grade novels, such as Hershey Herself by Cecilia Galante. She's always looking for strong commercial fiction, literary fiction, edgy,hip fiction,young adult, and middle grade novels, children's non-fiction, and narrative nonfiction. She doesn't handle practical nonfiction, inspirational or religious, genre science fiction or fantasy, or political thrillers.

In 1996, Sheri Reynolds' book The Rapture of Canaan was the second selection in Oprah's Book Club and a New York Times Bestseller. Her most recent novel, Firefly Cloak, was released last year. In addition to her novels, Sheri is also an award winning playwright. Her first play, "Orabelle's Wheelbarrow," won the Women Playwrights' Initiative playwriting competition for 2005. Sheri is also an associate professor and the Ruth and Perry Morgan Chair of Southern Literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk where she teaches creative writing and literature classes. website: www.sherireynolds.com

David L. Robbins is a co-founder of JRW. He was born in Richmond and received his undergraduate and Juris Doctorate degrees from William & Mary. He has published seven novels, including several international bestsellers. His latest novel, The Assassins Gallery, was released earlier this year as one of Random House’s lead titles. The film version of his novel Scorched Earth is in movie development at Warner Brothers. website: www.davidlrobbins.com

Corinne Schmidt was a correspondent for the "London Times" ABC News and the "Washington Post" during the Communist insurrection in Peru. She now lives in Virginia. Her first novel Useful Fools is being published by Dutton Books.

Ron Smith (JRW board member) is Writer-in-Residence at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of two books of poems, Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery (University Presses of Florida) and Moon Road (forthcoming from L.S.U. Press). He has been awarded a number of prizes, including the $10,000 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, the Theodore Roethke Prize in Poetry, and the Guy Owen Poetry Prize. He is the regular poetry reviewer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch; his reviews and articles have appeared in The Kenyon Review, San Francisco Review of Books, Georgia Review, and many other periodicals and reference works.

Michael Stearns is editorial director and foreign acquisitions manager for HarperCollins Children's Books, and has edited award-winning books by Jennifer Donnelly, Edward Bloor, Elise Primavera, Bruce Coville, Diane Duane, M.T. Anderson, and Frances Hardinge, among others. He has also spoken at a number of conferences, taught a dozen classes on writing, edited three anthologies of original stories, and published a half dozen pieces of his own fiction for both adults and children. He received his M.A. from Hollins University, where he also won the Andrew James Purdy Short Fiction Prize.

Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of seven historical and contemporary romance fiction novels, including THE HAUNTING, set in historic Fredericksburg, Virginia where Hope has made her home for the past six years.  When not writing, she pursues her passions for feline rescue and historic preservation. website: www.hopetarr.com

Logan Ward (JRW board member) a freelance writer for more than a dozen years, is a contributing editor for Popular Mechanics, Cottage Living, New Old House and Southern Accents, where he covers mainly architecture, design and technology. He has written for many other publications, including National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times, Popular Science and House Beautiful. His book, See You in a Hundred Years: Four seasons in forgotten America (BenBella, Spring, 2007),will be published in 2007 and is the story of his family's experience recreating the life of turn-of-the-century dirt farmers in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Logan lives in Staunton, Virginia with his wife and two children.

After years of teaching and working on her PhD in Philosophy, Merry Whiteford began writing fiction full-time in 1989. She has written three novels, Burning Down the House (Forge Press,1994), Dog People (Forge Press, 1998) and If Wishes Were Horses (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Press, 2003). She has won a number of honors for her work, including the H.E. Francis Short Story Award, first place in the Writers Workshop International Short Fiction Contest, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant, and first place in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Merry lives in Norfolk with her husband, Dave Hendrickson. Website: www.merrywhiteford.com website: www.merrywhiteford.com

David Wojahn's first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen by Richard Hugo as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and was also the winner of the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Book Award. His second collection was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1987. Pittsburgh has also published five of his subsequent books. He has received numerous fellowships, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is presently Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Irene Ziegler (JRW board member) is the author of a collection of linked short stories, Rules of the Lake, which was tapped by the New York City Public Library as a Best Book. Irene has completed five books for actors: collections of monologues culled from literature, movies, and plays.  As an actor, Irene has performed in numerous regional stage productions.  She has had recurring roles or guest starred in many notable TV series and films including Dawson’s Creek, The Contender, and Runaway Jury. As a voice-over artist, she has recorded books on tape, narrated the documentary film, Word and Deed, a biography of Ronald Reagan, and provided the voice for a talking Mercedes Benz. She is currently completing a novel.

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