JRW Conference 2009
Speaker and Moderator Bios

Stacy Hawkins Adams pens socially conscious women's fiction novels. Before writing novels she was a writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch where she extensively covered social issues and wrote a weekly faith-based column. Her work has been featured in Heart & Soul and Gospel Today magazines, AARP's Bulletin, USA Today and on Crosswalk.com. She currently writes a semimonthly parenting column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and has penned an online parenting column for Smart Beginnings, an early childhood initiative sponsored by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. She is also affiliated with organizations such as Virginia chapter of the National Speakers Association, Advanced Writers & Speakers Association, and the American Christian Fiction Writers. She is currently writing her sixth novel and her first nonfiction book. She lives in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia with her husband and two young children.

Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar (Candlewick Press, 2009), and the middle-grade novel, Chancey of the Maury River (Candlewick Press, 2008). Her debut young adult novel, Claiming Georgia Tate (Candlewick Press, 2005), was selected as a Book Sense Children's Pick, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a VOYA Review Editor's Choice. She also contributed to the acclaimed anthology, Our White House: Looking In Looking Out (Candlewick Press, 2008). Gigi is a native of Mississippi. She grew up in Mechanicsville, VA and now lives in the city of Richmond with her husband and daughter.

Donna Andrews

Frankie Bailey

Bill Blume 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 was 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 the University of South Carolina and worked as a news producer for WTVR-TV in Richmond until 2001.

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, at the City University of New York Graduate School. She has edited theHarperCollins World Reader, the Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry, Surrealist Love Poems, Surrealist Painters and Poets, Surrealism, and authored The Surrealist Look, Glorious Eccentrics, Surprised in Translation, To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University of Alabama Press), Provencal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France, and illustrated biographies of Picasso's Weeping Woman, Proust, Picasso, James, Woolf, and Dali. She has co-translated volumes of René Char, Tzara, Reverdy, Breton, and Desnos, held Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, and been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. He is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel -- both published by Hyperion books. He teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.

Shawna Christos (JRW Treasurer, 2009) has written manuals, booklets, and papers for a variety of companies, including a local Fortune 500 company, and earned recognition and awards for graphics, art, computer, and database work.

Susann Cokal 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.

Slashtipher J. Coleman, aka Slash Coleman, is best known for his award winning one man show, The Neon Man and Me, which recently ran Off-Broadway and will debut as a PBS special in the fall of 2007. Among his many industry accomplishments, his shows have earned him the Groucho Award for Best One Man Show of 2005 and Style Weekly'sTop 40 Under 40 award. Slash writes mostly about the things that are most important to him, his family, spirituality, and love. Coincidentally, these are the same things that have troubled him the most through the years. In 2004, he toured theaters nationally withLove in Boxes, in 2005 -2007 with The Neon Man and Me and in 2007 with Slash Coleman has Big Matzo Balls.

Constance Costas is editor of skirt! magazine's Richmond edition. A former staff writer for Self magazine, she has also covered health, fitness, medical, and parenting topics for Redbook, Health, Fitness, Shape, Ladies Home Journal, Working Woman, and Harper's Bazaar. Her essays have appeared in skirt!, where she has also been a contributing editor and columnist.

Colleen Curran is the author of the novel, Whores on the Hill (Vintage). Her short stories have been published in Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, Jane and Blackbird, and she edited the anthology, Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings (Vintage). Colleen was awarded a Teresa Pollak Award for Excellence in the Arts from Richmond Magazine, and has taught creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. Currently, she is an editor at Richmond.com.

Jim Daab has been involved in professional theatre for over thirty years. A member of Actors' Equity Association and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Jim also has a Theatre/Dance degree from Southern Illinois University, graduating with honors. As a performer, Jim has worked at theaters throughout the country, toured nationally as Oscar the Grouch with Sesame St. Live!, and had the honor of participating in a special holiday performance for President Reagan's staff in the East Room of the White House. He has directed and choreographed productions on both the educational and professional levels, including industrial shows for such clients as Watkins Products, Cargill, and Red Baron Pizza. Jim's introduction to mystery theatre began in Minneapolis where he lived and performed for fifteen years. He and his wife, Laura, moved to Richmond twelve years ago. They own and operate Mystery Dinner Playhouse -- Washington, D.C., Richmond, Williamsburg, and Virginia Beach. Jim has written thirty-two plays for his theatres since moving to Richmond, and is now in the process of working on his thirty-third.

Joni Davis is a native of Richmond and a partner with the law firm of Schroder, Fidlow and Titley. Her diverse clients include visual artists, authors, musicians, actors, actresses, models and fashion designers. She developed the Coffee with an Art Lawyer Program in 2006, a pro-bono program offering artists of every genre a free thirty-minute consultation with an attorney competent in the area of arts and entertainment. Joni co-authored her first novel, Feng Shui Love, which will be released on November 17, 2009.

Richard Ernsberger has a prolific 20 year career as a writer, correspondent and senior editor with Newsweek magazine. He is the author of two successful books Bragging Rights: A Year Inside the S.E.C. Football Conference (M. Evans and Company, Inc ), and God, Pepsi, and Groovin on the High Side: Tales from the Nascar Circuit (M. Evans and Company, Inc, 2003), among others. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Cape Fear Publishing, a Richmond, Virginia publishing company.

Elizabeth Evans has been an associate agent at the Reece Halsey Agency since 2004. She represents a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including upmarket and literary fiction, mysteries, YA fiction, memoir, current affairs, and pop culture. She's looking for excellent writing with a strong storyline and unforgettable characters. Special interests include stories set abroad, especially in Africa and Eastern Europe, the environment, adventure writing, and anything with a good love story. Elizabeth does not handle children's books, poetry, or screenplays. Elizabeth completed her MFA in 2006, and moved to New York City to open Reece Halsey New York in January of 2009.

Molly Friedrich is a literary agent extraordinaire for her own company, The Friedrich Agency, which she formed in 2006. Before starting her own company, she worked for the Aaron Priest Literary Agency for twenty-eight years, Anchor Press, and as an intern at Doubleday. Her host of clients includes Terry McMillan, Melissa Bank, and Sue Grafton. She was born in London but now resides in New York.

Lee Gimpel (JRW Co-Chair, 2009) covers business, technology, and the intersection thereof for such publications as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc., Worth, and BusinessWeek SmallBiz. In addition, he writes a regular biz-and-tech column for the in-flight magazine Go. His articles about culture, lifestyle, travel, and history have appeared in such publications as Budget Travel, Executive Traveler, Best Life, Las Vegas, Men's Journal, and The Washington Post. His first book, Fighting Wars, Planning for Peace, recounts the life of Gen. George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan. He is currently working on a book about his travels through emergent India.

Valley Haggard has taught creative writing through Art 180, the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, the VMFA, and the UVA Young Writer's Workshop. She is currently the director of www.RichmondYoungWriters.com and the Producer of the monthly James River Writers' Writing Show. She has been writing book reviews and author interviews for Style Weekly since May 2004 and has lived in New York, Italy, Colorado, Arkansas, Alaska, and about twenty different places around Richmond, Virginia. She currently lives in the house she grew up in with her husband, son, dog, and cat. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Elizabeth E. Hancock is the author of Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preacher's Daughter (Center Street, 2008). She was born to a Southern Baptist minister and choir soprano in Central Kentucky. She abandoned her Bluegrass roots to attend Harvard University, and in 1998, became the first-ever Miss Massachusetts with a Southern accent. She earned her JD from Georgetown in 2005, and now practices law in Virginia.

Phaedra Hise is a founding co-chair of James River Writers. As a journalist, her work has been anthologized and has appeared in national publications including Glamour, Salon, Forbes ASAP, Popular Mechanics, Ladies' Home Journal, Prevention, and Smithsonian Air & Space. She is a former staff writer for Inc., and currently a contributor to Fortune Small Business. She has written four books, most recently Pilot Error: Anatomy of a Plane Crash, called "a compelling page-turner" by the Boston Globe. She has given radio commentary and interviews, appeared on national television, and she speaks regularly at conferences and universities.

Emyl Jenkins (JRW Secretary, 2009) is the author of The Big Steal (Algonquin Books, 2009), her second book in the Sterling Glass Mysteries series, which is preceded by Stealing with Style (Algonquin Books, 2006). An avid antiques collector, she has also authored several books on antiques and appraisals. Her first antiques book, Why You're Richer than You Think (Rawson Wade Publishers, 1982), later reissued as Emyl Jenkins' Appraisal Book, won her a three-day series on Good Morning America. Alternating her home between Danville, VA, and North Carolina, she currently resides in Richmond, VA, with her husband Bob.

Lee Jones, III, aka Narrator, is a talented vocalist, poet, and self described "city survivor," most known for his many slam poetry and spoken word victories in various clubs such as Tropical Soul Café, The Tonic, The Cotton Club, and others. Starting out in The Bloody Reign Hardcore Richmond Rap Group exploring the darker side of Richmond, he has since performed at Virginia Union's Homecoming and Theater IV sponsored by Lyric Ave. Narrator has also been featured on TV commercials, mixtapes, and radio commercials.

Caroline Kettlewell is the author of two critically praised non-fiction books: the memoir Skin Game (St. Martin's, 1999), and Electric Dreams (Carroll & Graf, 2004), which was optioned for a feature film. As a freelance writer, she has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post, and her work has appeared as well in Virginia Living, skirt!, Vegetarian Times, and two anthologies. She maintains a blog dedicated to narrative nonfiction.

Dean King, a Richmond native, is the award-winning author of the forthcoming Unbound: The True Story of the Women Who Walked 4,000 Miles with Mao (Little, Brown, 2009) and eight other works of non-fiction, including Patrick O'Brian: A Life (Diane Pub Co, 2004) and the national bestseller Skeletons on the Zahara (BayBack Books, 2005). The subject of a History Channel documentary, Skeletons is currently being developed in London as a feature film. Dean's writing has appeared in Esquire, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, the Daily Telegraph, and the New York Times.

Michael Knight is the author of a novel, Divining Rod, two collections of short stories, Goodnight, Nobody and Dogfight and Other Stories, and a collection of novellas, The Holiday Season. His fiction has appeared in places like Esquire, The New Yorker, Oxford American and New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999, 2003, 2004, and 2009. He lives in Knoxville where he directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee.

Mark Lazenby 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.

Karen Lotz is the president and publisher of Candlewick Press, one of the largest independent publishing companies in the world. The company under her supervision has won countless awards such as the 2007 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for Zelda and Ivy: The Runaways, by Laura Kvasnosky, and this year's E.B. White Read-Aloud Award for Houndsley and Catina, by James Howe and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay. The company works with countless talented authors including Avi, Kate DiCamillo (author of The Tale of Despereaux), and James River Writers' own Gigi Amateau.

Thomas Lux was born in Massachusetts in December 1946. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon foundations, and the NEA. In 1994, he was awarded the Kinglsey Tufts prize for his book Split Horizon (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). The most recent of his eleven full-length collections is God Particles (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Currently, he is Bourne Professor of Poetry and director of the McEver Visiting Writers program at the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as on the MFA faculties of Sarah Lawrence College and Warren Wilson College.

Jann Malone has been a writer and editor of magazines and newspapers in Georgia and Virginia for 37 years. In 2008, she retired from The Richmond Times-Dispatch. There, she edited the book section, wrote a lifestyles column three days a week and did features and news stories on, well, just about everything. She continues to review books for The Times-Dispatch and is the book writer for Boomerlife magazine. Because 37 years is long enough to have a desk job, this spring she became a Master Naturalist.

Meg Medina has written for adults and children for over fifteen years. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines. MILAGROS: Girl from Away (Henry Holt, 2008) is her first novel for young readers. Her first picture book, TIA ISA WANTS A CAR, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press in 2011. She's currently working on a new young adult and new middle grade novel. She lives in Richmond, VA, with her husband and three children.

Jonathan Miles is the author of a novel, Dear American Airlines (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and others. It was also a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award, the Borders Original Voices Award, and the QPB New Voices Award. Miles is the cocktails columnist for the New York Times, and a regular contributor to magazines such as Details, GQ, Men's Journal, Food & Wine, and others. He lives in New York.

Scott Reynolds Nelson is the prizewinning author of four books in nineteenth-century American history. The New York Times has most recently called him a “fascinating guide to the grim landscape of Reconstruction.” His book, Steel Drivin’ Man, won three national awards in 2007 including the National Award for Arts Writing. Publisher’s Weekly named his children’s book, Ain’t Nothing But a Man, a best book of 2008. He is at work on Crash: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Panics for Alfred A. Knopf. A talented public speaker, he is Legum Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/books/18grim.html

Katherine Neville is the New York Times bestselling author of The Eight, A Calculated Risk, and The Magic Circle, to name a few. Her newest novel The Fire (Ballantine Books, 2008), has hit bestseller lists all over the world. Her twenty-year career as an international computer executive and consultant, principally in the fields of finance and energy, has taken her to live and work in six countries on three continents and half of the states in the U.S. She has taken post-graduate studies in African Literature and worked as a commercial photographer, portrait painter, busboy, waiter, and model, all from which she's drawn to enrich her novels. Katherine has been described as the female Umberto Eco, the female Alexander Dumas, and the female Stephen Spielberg. In spring 2008, Publishers Weekly described her books as having paved the way for books like The Da Vinci Code. In a national poll by the noted journal El Pais, in Spain, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time.

Kris Spisak Petroski teaches English at Virginia Commonwealth University and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, and works as a freelance editor between semesters. Her in-process middle grade novel was read and lauded by the sixth graders of St. Catherine's School in 2005, and she is presently pursuing its publication. Kris is also working on a new literary/commercial fiction novel, which she hopes to finish and begin seeking a publishing home for soon.

Jon Pineda is the author of two poetry collections: The Translator's Diary (New Issues, 2008), winner of the Green Rose Prize, and Birthmark (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), winner of the Crab Orchard Award Series Open Competition. His memoir, Sleep in Me, is forthcoming in 2010 from the University of Nebraska Press. The recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, he teaches in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte.

Jennifer Pooley is a Senior Editor at William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. She has published a wide range of literary fiction and non-fiction, including Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life and Northline, Michael Zadoorian's The Leisure Seeker, Sarah Hall's How To Paint a Dead Man (a nominee for the 2009 Man Booker Prize), Marjorie Hart's Summer at Tiffany, Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, and The Best of Friends by Richmond natives Sara James and Ginger Mauney. She is a 1997 graduate of Colgate University and lives in New York City.

David A. Price's most recent book, The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company (Knopf, 2008), was a Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year and a Fast Company Best Business Book of the Year. His previous book, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation (Knopf, 2003), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He grew up in Midlothian, Virginia, and now lives in Washington, D.C.

Virginia Pye (JRW Co-Chair, 2009) is a fiction writer and poet. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines including The North American Review, and recently her stories received honorable mention awards from Glimmer Train. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Wesleyan and has taught writing and literature at NYU and the University of Pennsylvania. She has recently completed a new novel about three generations of an American family in China.

David L. Robbins was born in Richmond and received his undergraduate and Juris Doctorate degrees from the College of William & Mary. He has published eight novels, including his most recent, The Betrayal Game, released in February 2008. His ninth, Broken Jewel is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. He is a founding co-chairman of the James River Writers.

Kirk Schroder is a partner in the Richmond-based law firm of Schroder Fidlow, PLC. A nationally recognized lawyer in the field of entertainment and art law, he is a lecturer in Entertainment Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and is the Chair-Elect of the American Bar Association Entertainment and Sports Law section. Kirk was named to the 2008 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the field of entertainment law. His clients in the entertainment field come from all over the United States and the world. He serves on the JRW Board of Directors.

Indrani Sen is a freelance writer and an adjunct professor at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. She has written for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Saveur magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Nation, among other publications. Sen was previously a staff reporter at New York Newsday, where she covered politics and wrote crime, breaking news, and feature stories. She was the special writer of "American Lives" - a book of profiles of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. She holds a BA in English from Oxford University and an MS from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Dash Shaw is a talented cartoonist whose work Bottomless has been on display at Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center. Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button was published by Fantagraphics in June 2008. His Body World webcomic has been bought by Pantheon Books and it will be published in 2010. Ever since moving to Richmond in his youth and throughout graduating from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 2005, Dash Shaw has been cultivating his cartoonist and illustrator craft. Some of his works include Love Eats Brains! (Odd God Press, 2004) and Mother's Mouth (Alternative Comics, 2006).

Louise Sloan is a writer, editor, and columnist for several publications. Currently she is the senior articles editor for Ladies Home Journal and a contributor to the Huffington Post. She has been an editor for POZ, G+J Custom Publishing, Golf Digest Woman, and Entertainment Weekly. The author of Knock Yourself Up (Avery/Penguin, 2007), a memoir and report on single motherhood, she has also been a freelance writer for Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour.

Ron Smith is Writer-in-Residence at St. Christopher's School in Richmond and teaches courses in poetry at the University of Richmond. He is the author of two books of poems, Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery (University Presses of Florida) and Moon Road (LSU Press). A winner of the $10,000 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, he is now one of the Curators for that prize. His prose appears in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, and Blackbird, which also hosts his poetry column "Red Guitar."

Patty Smith teaches creative writing and American literature at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology in Petersburg, VA. Her short fiction appears in such places as So to Speak: a journal of literature and the arts, and The Tusculum Review. Her essays appear in the anthologies One Teacher in Ten: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories (Alyson Publications, 1994), Tied in Knots: Funny Stories from the Wedding Day (Seal Press, 2006) and will be forthcoming in the anthology Women's Wonderlands (University of Wisconsin Press). She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA from Middlebury College, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives in Richmond and is at work on her first novel.

Maggie Stiefvater is a twenty-seven-year-old writer, artist, and musician. Her debut novel, Lament, was published by Flux in 2008. Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of Tantalize, called her writing "musical, magical, and practically radiating romance ... perfect for engaging sharp minds and poetic hearts." She has two novels forthcoming in 2009: Shiver (Scholastic, Aug '09) and Ballad (Flux, Oct '09). Maggie lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children.

Kristin Swenson, who holds a PhD in "the history and literature of ancient Israel," has been an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University for a decade. She is also the author of Living through Pain: Psalms and the Search for Wholeness (Baylor University Press, 2005) and the upcoming work Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked about Book of All Time (HarperCollins, 2010). She currently resides in Richmond's Fan District with a hound and an alley cat.

Jason Tesauro, in lieu of a law degree, pursued wine school and his affection for Viognier. By day, he serves as marketing director for Barboursville Vineyards. By night, Tesauro is coauthor of The MODERN GENTLEMAN: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice (Ten Speed Press, 2002), and The MODERN LOVER: A Playbook for Suitors, Spouses & Ringless Carousers (Ten Speed Press, 2004). He pens a wine & spirits column for The Sunday Paper (Atlanta, GA) and Richmond magazine, as well as manners/dating/sex/relationships columns for Maxim, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, and Match.com. As a media spokesman, Tesauro has partnered with Johnnie Walker Blue, Orient-Express, and The Ritz-Carlton, where he currently leads The Modern Gentleman seminar series in Tysons Corner, VA. With his wife and two tots astride, Tesauro is presently scribbling his first novel ... with chubby crayons.

Phyllis Theroux is an essayist, columnist, teacher and author. Born in San Francisco, California, she is the critically acclaimed author of a memoir, California and Other States of Grace (William Morrow & Co, 1980), two collections of essays, Peripheral Visions (William Morrow & Co , 1981) and Nightlights:Bedtime Stories for Parents in the Dark (Viking Adult, 1987) and an anthology, The Book of Eulogies (Scribner, 1987). Her first children's book, Serefina Under the Circumstances, was recently published by Greenwillow Press. She has also been a contributing essayist on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and her columns, op-ed pieces, reviews and feature stories appear in various newspapers including The New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and International Herald Tribune. Phyllis resides in Ashland where she helped to start many non-profit and discussion groups.

Sandy Treadway is director of the Library of Virginia. Prior to her appointment as Librarian of Virginia in July 2007, she served as deputy director of the Library and also as head of the Library's publications program. She is a graduate of Manhattanville College and holds a doctoral degree in American History from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Tennessee. She is the author of Women of Mark: A History of the Woman's Club of Richmond, 1894-1994 and has edited several other volumes on southern and Virginia history. She is a frequent speaker on Virginia and women's history topics.

John Ulmschneider is currently the University Librarian and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he serves on the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee, the Council of Deans, and the University Council. He has held many positions with other libraries including ones at North Carolina State University, College of William and Mary, and the National Library of Medicine. He has published several articles, including "Integrated Electronic Document Delivery: Linchpin for Campus Information Systems" (EDUCOM Review 27, 1996) and "A Model Automated Document Delivery System for Research Libraries" (Advances in Library Administration and Organization 12, 1994).

Paige Wheeler helped found Folio Literary Management, LLC, a literary agency that services its authors and their intellectual property. Folio is able to provide the ability to sell both domestic and foreign rights as well as offer marketing department, speakers, and licensing services. Prior to founding Folio, Paige founded Creative Media Agency (CMA) in 1997 and was its president for nine years until she merged CMA into Folio in 2006.

Ken Wright was a book editor and publisher for more than 20 years. He is currently a literary agent at Writers House in New York City, where he focuses on commercial narrative nonfiction of all kinds for adults and young readers -- biographies, memoirs, popular science, history -- as well as literary and commercial adult and children's fiction; and popular reference.

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